Edward (Franklin) Albee (III) Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Edward (Franklin) Albee (III)

In the early 1960s it was customary to find the names of four young playwrights linked: Edward Albee, Jack Gelber, Arthur Kopit, and Jack Richardson. These, and certain others like them, wished to prevent theatre in the United States from retreating further into a detached lethargy. These playwrights were turning to Europe for new forms to experiment with, much as Eugene O'Neill had done two generations earlier. In their hands the nature of human experience was not to be rendered either by a straightforward brand of realism or by a merely genteel departure from it. Of these four playwrights, the most successful, prolific, and controversial is Edward Albee. The nature of the controversy surrounding his work seems little changed over the past two decades. His willingness to experiment with the medium and to challenge the received ideas of theatre audiences and society in general has, if anything, increased with age. His work betrays no signs of retrenchment, no evidence that he will cease being an acerbic, painstaking, vivid, lyrical, funny, and altogether serious scribe of human loss, self-delusion, and entropy.

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