Edward Albee

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Edward Franklin Albee, 1961
photograph by Carl van Vechten , from the Van Vechten Collection of the Library of Congress

Edward Franklin Albee (born March 12, 1928 in Washington, DC , † September 16, 2016 in Montauk , New York ) was an American writer . From the late 1950s onwards , it became famous through successful plays such as The Zoo Story , The Sandbox and, above all, Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? known. Albee has received multiple Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize .

Life

Edward Albee

Edward Albee was two weeks after his birth, the wealthy owner of a vaudeville -Theaters adopted and so grew up in the colorful atmosphere of the music-hall Angels on. Due to the numerous trips with his parents, Albee had to change schools several times; a study at Trinity College in Hartford (Connecticut) he broke off in 1946 after a year and a half. Albee was fascinated by what happened on stage from early childhood; his father, who was involved in the Keith-Albee-Theater-Circuit, supported his early inclination to the theater. In 1940, when he was twelve, Albee wrote his first stage work , the erotic farce Aliqueen , and discovered his homosexuality.

Albee himself regretted not having learned to play the piano. In his youth, despite his passion for theater, he would have liked to become a composer . As a substitute for music, he wrote several short stories , another play and a 538-page novel ( The Flesh of the Unbelievers , 1944), above all numerous poems , one of which was published in 1945 in the Texan magazine Kaleidoscope .

At the age of 20 he went to New York City to Greenwich Village and got by with various odd jobs. He also received a legacy that his maternal grandmother had left for him in smaller installments.

As part of his various casual activities, Albee also worked for a year for the New York broadcaster WNYC , where he organized the music program. In addition, he continued to write poetry and began a second novel, which he did not complete. During a stay in Italy for several months, he worked on another novel in Florence in 1952, which, however, remained unpublished, as did the collection of his lyrical texts.

The writing of plays only became formative for Albee's literary activity when he was over 30 years old. Shortly before, Thornton Wilder , to whom he had submitted his poems, had advised him to work on the stage.

Albee already had great success with his first work, Die Zoogeschichte . Written in 1958 and influenced by Samuel Beckett , it can be counted among the first American plays in the theater of the absurd . Since nobody in the United States wanted to play the play at first, it was premiered on September 28, 1959 at the Schiller Theater in West Berlin in a translation by Pinkas Braun . "The success of Berlin cleared the stage for Albee in New York." The first performance in the United States followed on January 14, 1960 at the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village and brought it to more than 500 performances. With Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , which premiered on October 13, 1962 at the Billy Rose Theater in New York, Albee then established itself on Broadway . It became his most played piece and in 1966 with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton also filmed .

In October 1963, Albee's stage version of The Ballad of the Sad Café , an adaptation of the story of the same name by Carson McCullers , premiered at the Martin Beck Theater in New York. Albee received numerous awards for this piece, including The Anta Award , The New York Drama Critics Award and Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award .

With his complete dramatic oeuvre, Albee also won almost every major award given in the United States for literature and theater, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award . In Vienna he was awarded the Nestroy Theater Prize. In 1966 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1972 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Pinkas Braun was the translator of his works into German from 1959 . Since the 1980s, translations by Alissa Walser and Martin Walser have also been made .

Albee always openly admitted his homosexuality and lived with his partner Jonathan Thomas from 1971 until he died of bladder cancer in 2005. Albee died at his home in Montauk, New York, at the age of 88.

Works

Stage plays

U = premiere; DSE = German-language premiere

  • 1958: The Zoo Story
  • 1959: The Death of Bessie Smith
    • The death of Bessie Smith , German by Pinkas Braun, DSE: April 21, 1960, Schloßparktheater Berlin
  • 1959: The Sandbox , U: 1960 New York
  • 1959: Fam and Yam
  • 1960: The American Dream . U: 1961 New York
    • The American Dream , German by Pinkas Braun, DSE: October 7, 1961, Schillertheater Berlin
  • 1962: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? U: October 13, 1962 Billy Rose Theater in New York
  • 1963: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe , 1963 (based on the novel of the same name by Carson McCullers ), U: 1963 New York
  • 1964: Tiny Alice , U: 1964 New York
  • 1965: Malcolm (based on the novel of the same name by James Purdy )
    • Malcolm , German by Pinkas Braun, DSE: November 26, 1969, Württembergische Landesbühne, Esslingen
  • 1966: A Delicate Balance , U: September 22, 1966, Martin Beck Theater, New York
    • Sensitive balance , German by Pinkas Braun, DSE: April 26, 1967, Münchner Kammerspiele , director: August Everding
    • Sensitive balance , new translation by Alissa and Martin Walser, DSE: open
  • 1966: Breakfast at Tiffany’s (musical based on the novel by Truman Capote )
  • 1967: Everything in the Garden (based on a play by Giles Cooper ), U: November 27, 1967 New York
    • Everything in the garden , German by Pinkas Braun, DSE: February 5, 1969, Münchner Kammerspiele, director: Hans Schweikart
    • Everything in the garden , new translation by Alissa and Martin Walser, DSE: open
  • 1968: Box and Quotations of the Chairman Mao Tse-tung , U: March 1968, Buffalo
    • Box and words of Chairman Mao Tse-tung , German by Pinkas Braun, DSE: January 19, 1969, Münchner Kammerspiele
  • 1971: All Over
    • All over , in German by Pinkas Braun, DSE: January 6, 1972, Münchner Kammerspiele
  • 1974: Seascape , U: 1974 New York
  • 1975: Listening
    • To listen. A chamber play
  • 1976: Counting the Ways
    • Game types. A vaudeville
  • 1979: The Lady From Dubuque , U: January 31, 1980, Morosco Theater, New York, directed by Alan Schneider
    • Die Dame von Dingsville , German by Pinkas Braun, DSE: May 15, 1982 Zimmer Theater Heidelberg, director: Ute Richter
  • 1981: Lolita (based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov )
    • Lolita. Piece in 2 acts. An adaptation of the novel by Vladimir Nabokov
  • 1981: The Man Who Had Three Arms . U: April 5, 1983, Lyceum Theater , New York, directed by Edward Albee
  • 1982: Finding the Sun
  • 1987: Marriage Play , U: May 17, 1987, Vienna's English Theater , Vienna
    • Marriage theater , German by Alissa and Martin Walser, DSE: open
  • 1991: Three Tall Women , U: June 14, 1991, Vienna's English Theater , Vienna
    • Three tall women , in German by Alissa and Martin Walser, DSE: March 30, 1995, Stadttheater Würzburg
  • 1992: The Lorca Play
  • 1993: Fragments
  • 1996: The Play About the Baby , U: September 2, 1998, Almeida Theater , London
    • The game for babies , German by Alissa and Martin Walser, DSE: November 20, 1999, Burgtheater Vienna, director: Holger Berg
  • 2000: The Goat or Who is Sylvia? , U: March 10, 2002, Golden Theater, New York
    • The goat or Who is Sylvia? , German by Alissa and Martin Walser, DSE: January 10, 2004, Burgtheater Vienna, director: Andrea Breth
  • 2001: Occupant
  • 2003: Knock! Knock! Who's There !?
  • 2004: Peter & Jerry (1st act: Homelife , 2nd act: The Zoo Story )
  • 2007: Me Myself and I

Essays

  • Stretching My Mind. Essays 1960–2005 , 2005

Film adaptations

Radio plays

A number of Albee's stage plays was also in the German-speaking countries as a radio play broadcast, sockets, so Death of Bessie Smith , The Zoo Story , marriage Theater , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and listening .

Settings

  • William Flanagan (1923–1969): Song for a Winter Child for voice and piano (1964)
  • William Flanagan: The Lady of Tearful Regret for coloratura soprano, baritone, flute, clarinet, piano and string quartet (ed. 1977)

Awards

Secondary literature

  • Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee (= Friedrich's playwright of the world theater, volume 63). Friedrich Verlag, Velber near Hanover, 1968, DNB 456171878 .
    • Paperback edition: Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee . Edition supplemented by Henning Rischbieter (=  playwright of the world theater ). Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (dtv), Munich 1977, ISBN 3-423-06863-9 .
  • Ronald Hayman: Contemporary Playwrights - Edward Albee . Heinemann Verlag, London 1971, ISBN 0-435-18409-1 .
  • Herbert Rauter: Edward Albee . In: Martin Christadler (Ed.): American literature of the present in single representations (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 412). Kröner, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , pp. 488-505.

Web links

Commons : Edward Albee  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nelson Pressley: Edward Albee, Pulitzer-winning playwright of modern masterpieces, dies at 88 . The Washington Post Online , September 16, 2016, accessed September 17, 2016.
  2. ↑ “(...) is (...) adopted by a New York millionaire couple and named after the new grandfather, co-owner of a chain of vaudeville theaters. The orphan grows up in an extremely exclusive environment (...) ”- Werner Reinhart: Albee, Edward . In: Bernd Engler, Kurt Müller (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of American Authors . JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-476-01654-4 , p. 13–16, here p. 13 .
  3. ↑ Albee is not known to his natural parents. Albee himself gives as the date of adoption two weeks after the birth in some places, and one week after the birth in other places. See Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , p. 7.
  4. ↑ Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , p. 7 f.
    Ronald Hayman: Contemporary Playwrights - Edward Albee . S. IX.
    See also Herbert Rauter: Edward Albee , p. 503 f.
  5. ↑ a b Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , p. 8.
    Ronald Hayman: Contemporary Playwrights - Edward Albee . P. IX f.
  6. ^ Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , p. 8.
    Ronald Hayman: Contemporary Playwrights - Edward Albee . S. IX.
  7. ↑ Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , p. 9.
    Herbert Rauter: Edward Albee , p. 504.
  8. ↑ Willi Winkler : The tears in the freezer. Edward Albee became world famous for his marital war play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" He died at the age of 88. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 19, 2016, p. 9.
  9. ↑ Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , pp. 10-12.
    Ronald Hayman: Contemporary Playwrights - Edward Albee . S. X f.
  10. ↑ Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , p. 11.
  11. ↑ Randy Shulman, Todd Franson: Who's Afraid of Edward Albee? Metro Weekly, March 10, 2011, archived from the original on April 12, 2014 ; accessed on September 18, 2016 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Albee, Edward
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Albee, Edward Franklin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC , United States
DATE OF DEATH 16th September 2016
Place of death Montauk , New York