爱德华·阿尔比

爱德华·阿尔比（英语：Edward Albee，1928年3月12日—2016年9月16日），美国剧作家，最著名的作品有《谁害怕弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙？》、《动物园的故事》、《优美的平衡》、《海景画》等。其作品设计严密，通常是关于现代状态的冷峻考察。他早期的作品是荒诞派戏剧的美国化。以Paula Vogel为代表的新一代美国剧作家赞赏阿尔比在1960年代早期重构了战后美国喜剧——既注重演出手法，也注重辛辣的台词。阿尔比仍不断推出新剧，如《The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia?》（2002）。

电影

阿尔比的《谁害怕弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙？》曾被改编成电影《灵欲春宵》，此片由迈克·尼科尔斯执导，伊丽莎白·泰勒及理查德·伯顿等主演。

Edward Franklin Albee III ( AWL-bee; March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified as and named the Theater of the Absurd. Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.

His works are often considered frank 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, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet.

His middle period comprised plays that explored the psychology of maturing, marriage and sexual relationships. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's mix of theatricality and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent postwar American theatre in the early 1960s. Later in life, Albee continued to experiment in works such as The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002).

Early life

Edward Albee was born in 1928. His biological father left his mother, Louise Harvey, and he was placed for adoption two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York, where he grew up. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theaters. His adoptive mother, Reed's second wife, Frances (Cotter), was a socialite. He later based the main character of his 1991 play Three Tall Women on his mother, with whom he had a conflicted relationship.

Albee spent multiple childhood summers at Adirondack Camp in Glenburnie-on-Lake George, New York, and later at the Lake Sunapee Summer School in New Hampshire. The camp newspaper, The Adirondack Eagle, listed him as an intermediate reporter in its August 3, 1940 issue, and carried a short account of an overnight hike written by him when he was twelve.

Albee attended the Rye Country Day 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 (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, graduating in 1946. He had attracted theatre attention by having scripted and published nine poems, eleven short stories, essays, a long act play, Schism, and a 500-page novel, The Flesh of Unbelievers (Horn, 1) 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.

Albee left home for good in his late teens. In a later interview, he said: "I never felt comfortable with the adoptive parents. I don't think they knew how to be parents. I probably didn't know how to be a son, either." In a 1994 interview, he said he left home at 18 because "[he] had to get out of that stultifying, suffocating environment." In 2008, he told interviewer Charlie Rose that he was "thrown out" because his parents wanted him to become a "corporate thug" and did not approve of his aspirations to be a writer.

Career

1959–1966: The Early Plays

Albee moved into New York's Greenwich Village, where he supported himself with odd jobs while learning to write plays. His roommate in New York was the composer William Flanagan. Primarily in his early plays, Albee's work had various characters that challenged the image of a heterosexual marriage. Despite challenging society's views about the gay community, he did not view himself as an LGBT advocate. Albee's work typically criticized the American Dream. His first play, The Zoo Story, written in three weeks, was first staged in Berlin in 1959 before premiering off-Broadway in 1960. His next, The Death of Bessie Smith, similarly premiered in Berlin before arriving in New York.