Edward Albee

Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , and Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf . His works are often considered as wellcrafted, realistic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugne Ionesco, and Jean Genet. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albees daring mix of theatricality and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the postwar American theatre in the early 1960s. Albee continues to experiment in works such as The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia .

According to Magills Survey of American Literature , Edward Albee was born somewhere in Virginia . He was adopted two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York in Westchester County, where he grew up. Albees adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee160II, owned several theaters. Here the young Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre. His adoptive mother, Reeds third wife, Frances , tried to raise Albee to fit into their social circles. Albee attended the Clinton High School, then the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, from which he was expelled. He then was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where he was dismissed in less than a year. He enrolled at The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, graduating in 1946. His formal education continued at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was expelled in 1947 for skipping classes and refusing to attend compulsory chapel.

Source: Wikipedia