Image: UH Photographs Collection
Edward Albee, one of the greatest playwrights of our generation, died on Friday at his home in Montauk, N.Y. He was 88.
The three-time Pulitzer-winning author, who was a playwright professor at the University of Houston from 1989 to 2003, is best known for his play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) which won five Tony Awards. Its movie adaptation, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, garnered five Oscars.
Albee wrote more than 30 plays during his lifetime, including The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959) and A Delicate Balance (1966). As Ben Brantley of the New York Times wrote, “Mr. Albee has unsparingly considered subjects outside the average theatergoer’s comfort zone: the capacity for sadism and violence within American society; the fluidness of human identity; the dangerous irrationality of sexual attraction and, always, the irrefutable presence of death.”
Albee left a note to be revealed at the time of his death, saying, “To all of you who have made my being alive so wonderful, so exciting and so full, my thanks and all my love.”
You’ll be missed, Edward Albee, but not forgotten.
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