Edward Albee has defined modern American theater with four decades of provocative, controversial and brilliant plays. A three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner lauded as “one of the eternal innovators” in American drama, he challenges his audiences with stories that express the bone-simple, shattering truth of the human experience.

Called “the greatest living playwright” by The New Yorker, Albee is perhaps most well-known for his three-act drama, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? First produced in 1962, Virginia Woolf was immediately recognized for its unabashedly honest dialogue and jarring interpretation of modern relationships. It won both the Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle Awards and is widely considered a classic of contemporary theater.
 
In his lectures, Albee describes the power of the arts as a catalyst for change. He believes that art should be dangerous, that it should reveal all of our shortcomings and complacency, hopefully inspiring us to live our lives more fully. “The job of the arts,” says Albee, “is to hold a mirror up to us and say: ‘Look, this is how you really are. If you don’t like it, change.’” He also explores charged topics such as government repression, censorship in the arts, and cultural literacy.

Adopted as an infant, Albee clashed early on with his parents’ attempts to make him a member of the social elite. He left home when he was 20 and worked odd jobs while becoming immersed in the avant-garde movements of New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1950s.
 

Witty and intelligent...his passionate defense of the arts spurred a standing ovation.

University of Missouri - Columbia

His first play, The Zoo Story — about a drifter who acts out his own murder with the unwitting aid of an upper-middle-class editor — opened in 1959, effectively giving birth to American absurdist drama. He was immediately hailed as the leader of a new theatrical movement.

With daring, groundbreaking plays, Albee explores the most intimate aspects of our lives and society — from race relations (The Death of Bessie Smith) and family life (A Delicate Balance) to mortality (The Lady from Dubuque) and the blurred line between reality and illusion (Seascape). His other plays include The Sandbox, The American Dream, The Play About the Baby and Three Tall Women.

Albee won his Pulitzer Prizes for A Delicate Balance (1966), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994). He also has received two Tony Awards for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) and The Goat or Who is Sylvia? (2002). He is a Kennedy Center Honoree and in 1996 was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

In 2005, Virginia Woolf returned to Broadway, starring Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin, and received six Tony Award nominations, including best play. Albee also received a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre. The only other playwright to receive this honor was the late Arthur Miller.

In November 2005, Albee released Stretching My Mind, his first collection of writings on theater, literature, the visual arts, and the political and cultural backgrounds that have defined our times.

He currently is working on a new production of his play, Peter & Jerry, which is scheduled to open at Second Stage in Fall 2007.