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BY JOHNÂ TOWNSEND
Lavender
At 80, Edward Albee looms as America's greatest living playwright. He has won the Tony for Best Play twice and the Pulitzer for drama thrice.
Albee is the last playwright to have been an actual bona fide household name. That was back when titans like Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Albee were part of the national discourse. They were read by small-town folks in New Mexico and Alabama who couldn't get to New York to see their plays performed, but still thirsted to know what all the fuss was about.
In 1958, Albee shattered New York's formulaic notions of theater with The Zoo Story, followed the next year with the ferocious The Death of Bessie Smith. The latter ranks as a pivotal American play about racism. Both works were utterly emblematic of the dawn of a zeitgeist wherein humankind's alienation in a godless universe became the lens of the collective (un)consciousness. "Nihilism" was a term often used then.
HEAR MORE:
Edward Albee will join John Townsend and Dixie Treichel for a February 19 January 29 interview on KFAI "Fresh Fruit" (7:30-8:30 p.m. CST)
Photo by Jerry Speier