Books by Edward Albee
Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays 1960 to 2005
by Edward Albee
America's most important living playwright, Edward Albee, has been rocking our country's moral, political and artistic complacency for more than 50 years. Beginning with his debut play, The Zoo Story (1958), and on to his barrier breaking works of the 1960s, most notably The American Dream (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Delicate Balance (1966), Albee's unsparing indictment of the American way of life earned him early distinction as the dramatist of his generation. His acclaim was enhanced further in the decades that followed with prize-winning dramas such as Seascape (1974) and Three Tall Women (1991), as well as recent works like The Play About the Baby (2001) and The Goat. (2002).
Albee has brought the same critical force to his non-theatrical prose. Stretching My Mind collects for the first time ever the author's writings on theater, literature, and the political and cultural battlegrounds that have defined his career. Many of the selections were drawn from Albee's private papers, and almost all previously published material—dating from 1960 to the present—has never been reprinted. Topics include Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Sam Shepherd, as well as autobiographical writings about Albee's life, work, and worldview.
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A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer: Writings to Stop Violence Against Women and Girls
by Alice Walker, Howard Zinn, Maya Angelou, Michael Eric Dyson, Edward Albee, Erin Cressida Wilson, Abiola Abrams, Suheir Hammad
Selections from the “Until the Violence Stops” Festival
Featuring writings by Abiola Abrams • Edward Albee • Tariq Ali • Maya Angelou • Periel Aschenbrand • Patricia Bosworth • Nicole Burdette • Kate Clinton • Kimberle Crenshaw • Michael Cunningham • Edwidge Danticat • Ariel Dorfman • Mollie Doyle • Slavenka Drakulic • Michael Eric Dyson • Dave Eggers • Kathy Engel • Eve Ensler • Jane Fonda • Carol Gilligan • Jyllian Gunther • Suheir Hammad • Christine House • Marie Howe • Carol Michèle Kaplan • Moisés Kaufman • Michael Klein • Nicholas Kristof • James Lecesne • Elizabeth Lesser • Mark Matousek • Deena Metzger • Susan Miller • Winter Miller • Susan Minot • Robin Morgan • Kathy Najimy • Lynn Nottage • Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy • Sharon Olds • Hanan al-Shaykh • Anna Deavere Smith • Diana Son • Monica Szlekovics • Robert Thurman • Betty Gale Tyson • Alice Walker • Jody Williams • Erin Cressida Wilson • Howard Zinn
This groundbreaking collection, edited by author and playwright Eve Ensler, features pieces from “Until the Violence Stops,” the international tour that brings the issue of violence against women and girls to the forefront of our consciousness. These diverse voices rise up in a collective roar to break open, expose, and examine the insidiousness of brutality, neglect, a punch, or a put-down. Here is Edward Albee on S&M; Maya Angelou on women’s work; Michael Cunningham on self-mutilation; Dave Eggers on a Sudanese
abduction; Carol Gilligan on a daughter witnessing her mother being hit; Susan Miller on raising a son as a single mother; and Sharon Olds on a bra.
These writings are inspired, funny, angry, heartfelt, tragic, and beautiful. But above all, together they create a true and profound portrait of this issue’s effect on every one of us. With information on how to organize an “Until the Violence Stops” event in your community, A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer is a call to the world to demand an end to violence against women.
“In the current era, it takes some brain racking to think of anyone else doing anything quite like Ensler. She’s a countercultural consciousness-raiser, an empowering figure, a truth-teller.”
–Chicago Tribune
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A Delicate Balance
by Edward Albee
Six people are made to face the emptiness which, despite their affluence and intelligence, pervades their lives
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A Delicate Balance
by Edward Albee
The play revolves around wealthy middle-aged couple Agnes and Tobias, who have their complacency shattered when their longtime friends Harry and Edna appear at their doorstep. Claiming an encroaching, nameless "fear" has forced them from their own home, these neighbors bring a firestorm of doubt, recrimination and ultimately solace, upsetting the "delicate balance" of Agnes and Tobias's household. In recent years, A Delicate Balance has enjoyed many and new stunning revivals, running now, including a Broadway production in 1996, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival, and another at the Alameida Theatre in London in 2011.
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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Revised by the Author
by Edward Albee
A bitter marriage unravels in Edward Albee's darkly humorous play—winner of the Tony Award for Best Play.
“Twelve times a week,” answered actress Uta Hagen when asked how often she’d like to play Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the same way, audiences and critics alike could not get enough of Edward Albee’s masterful play. A dark comedy, it portrays husband and wife George and Martha in a searing night of dangerous fun and games. By the evening’s end, a stunning, almost unbearable revelation provides a climax that has shocked audiences for years. With its razor-sharp dialogue and the stripping away of social pretense, Newsweek rightly foresaw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as “a brilliantly original work of art—an excoriating theatrical experience, surging with shocks of recognition and dramatic fire [that] will be igniting Broadway for some time to come.”
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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
by Edward Albee
"Twelve times a week," answered Uta Hagen when asked how often she'd like to play Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the same way, audiences and critics alike could not get enough of Edward Albee's masterful play. A dark comedy, it portrays husband and wife George and Martha in a searing night of dangerous fun and games. By the evening's end, a stunning, almost unbearable revelation provides a climax that has shocked audiences for years. With the play's razor-sharp dialogue and the stripping away of social pretense, Newsweek rightly foresaw Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as "a brilliantly original work of art--an excoriating theatrical experience, surging with shocks of recognition and dramatic fire [that] will be igniting Broadway for some time to come."
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The Collected Plays of Edward Albee: Volume 2 1966 - 1977
by Edward Albee
These range from the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Delicate Balance to the brilliant and complex short plays Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung to his second Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Seascape, to the scintillating one-act comedy Counting the Ways (recently revived off-Broadway to great acclaim), Everything in the Garden, All Over, Listening, and closing with the controversial Lady from Dubuque (hailed by Time magazine as a major work Albee's best since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ).The volume includes an introduction by Edward Albee, providing new insights into these works.
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The Goat, or, Who Is Sylvia?
by Edward Albee
Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Albee's most provocative, daring, and controversial play since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Goat won four major awards for best new play of the year (Tony, New York Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle). In the play, Martin, a successful architect who has just turned fifty, leads an ostensibly ideal life with his loving wife and gay teenage son. But when he confides to his best friend that he is also in love with a goat (named Sylvia), he sets in motion events that will destroy his family and leave his life in tatters.
The playwright himself describes it this way: Every civilization sets quite arbitrary limits to its tolerances. The play is about a family that is deeply rocked by an unimaginable event and they solve that problem. It is my hope that people will think afresh about whether or not all the values they hold are valid.
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The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?: Broadway Edition
by Edward Albee
Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Albee’s most provocative, daring, and controversial play since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Goat won every major award for best new play of the year: the Tony, New York Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards. In the play, Martin―a hugely successful architect who has just turned fifty―leads an ostensibly ideal life with his loving wife and gay teenage son. But when he confides to his best friend that he is also in love with a goat (named Sylvia), he sets in motion events that will destroy his family and leave his life in tatters.The playwright himself describes it this way: “Every civilization sets quite arbitrary limits to its tolerances. The play is about a family that is deeply rocked by an unimaginable event and how they solve that problem. It is my hope that people will think afresh about whether or not all the values they hold are valid."
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The Collected Plays Of Edward Albee: Volume 1 1958 - 1965
by Edward Albee, The Overlook Press
These range from the four brilliant one-act plays with which he exploded on the New York theater scene The Zoo Story, The Death of Bessie Smith, The Sandbox, and The American Dream to his early masterpiece, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf Also included are two adaptations from notable American novels The Ballad of the Sad Café and Malcolm and Albee's mysteriously fascinating Tiny Alice. This book represents one of the most exciting and bold periods in the career of one of America's most popular and imaginative playwrights.
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The Collected Plays of Edward Albee, Volume 1: 1958-1965
by Edward Albee
These range from the four brilliant one-act plays with which he exploded on the New York theater scene The Zoo Story, The Death of Bessie Smith, The Sandbox, and The American Dream to his early masterpiece, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf Also included are two adaptations from notable American novels The Ballad of the Sad Café and Malcolm and Albee's mysteriously fascinating Tiny Alice. This book represents one of the most exciting and bold periods in the career of one of America's most popular and imaginative playwrights.
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The Collected Plays of Edward Albee: Volume 3 1978 - 2003
by Edward Albee
Included are some of Albee s most iconoclastic and influential plays, including his adaptation of Nabokov's masterpiece Lolita; The Man Who Had Three Arms, an indictment of the abuse of critical power; three shorter plays, Finding the Sun, Marriage Play, and Fragments, all hailed as triumphs of innovative dramaturgy; Occupant, a touching homage to, and a striking portrait of, Albee's longtime friend, the sculptor Louise Nevelson; as well as The Play About the Baby, Knock! Knock! Who s There!, and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia, a trilogy of plays that brought Albee the kind of critical and popular acclaim he enjoyed early in his career after years of neglect by the theater establishment.
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At Home at the Zoo: Homelife and the Zoo Story
by Edward Albee
The Zoo Story. More than fifty years later, master playwright Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?) wrote a prequel to this classic. Home Story contains the events in Peter’s life immediately preceding his encounter with Jerry on the park bench and is every bit as powerful as the original. We meet Ann, Peter’s wife, and see the conversation that compelled Peter to go for that fateful walk in the park. For the first time collected in one volume, At Home at the Zoo is a must for any theater lover.
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A Delicate Balance: Broadway Edition
by Edward Albee
The play revolves around wealthy middle-aged couple Agnes and Tobias, who have their complacency shattered when their longtime friends Harry and Edna appear at their doorstep. Claiming an encroaching, nameless "fear" has forced them from their own home, these neighbors bring a firestorm of doubt, recrimination and ultimately solace, upsetting the "delicate balance" of Agnes and Tobias's household. In recent years, A Delicate Balance has enjoyed many and new stunning revivals, running now, including a Broadway production in 1996, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival, and another at the Alameida Theatre in London in 2011.
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Marriage Play. (Acting Edition for Theater Productions)
by Edward Albee
Jack comes home from a middling day at the office to quickly announce to his wife, Gillian, that he is leaving her. Suspecting for some time a midlife crisis, Gillian goads Jack about this announcement, forcing him to try it again-going outside and coming in again-twice! Jack wants his wife, whom he still loves, to really understand his fears and the reasons he must leave her. His days seem unknown to him; his secretary of fifteen years is a total stranger; his sex is by rote. Gillian understands but feels the investment of a thirty-year marriage is worth holding on to because so much is in place, and quite frankly, they've been through these changes before: affairs, neglect, sections of time forgotten. Jack accuses Gillian of not listening, an accusation she easily returns, and when Jack then does start to leave, Gillian blocks him and a small battle ensues. Retreating to their corners, both recount memorable points in their marriage and lives, and discovering that through it all, nothing is really enough. As the lights fade, they prepare for a departure but don't make a move.
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Three Plays by Edward Albee: The Death of Bessie Smith, The Sandbox, The American Dream
by Edward Albee
These three plays tackle major themes such as race relations, American family life, and the essence of theater itself -- each of which still continue to resonate. Representing the bold and exciting periods in the then young career of widely consideredAmerica's most popular and imaginative playwrights, this edition is a must-have for theater lovers.
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The Collected Plays of Edward Albee, Volume 2: 1966-1977
by Edward Albee
These range from the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Delicate Balance to the brilliant and complex short plays Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung to his second Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Seascape, to the scintillating one-act comedy Counting the Ways (recently revived off-Broadway to great acclaim), Everything in the Garden, All Over, Listening, and closing with the controversial Lady from Dubuque (hailed by Time magazine as a major work Albee's best since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ).The volume includes an introduction by Edward Albee, providing new insights into these works.
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Three Tall Women
by Edward Albee
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR DRAMA
Recently revived on Broadway in a production directed by Joe Mantello, starring two-time Oscar winner Glenda Jackson and Tony winner Laurie Metcalf
Earning a Pulitzer and Best Play awards from the Evening Standard, Critics Circle, and Outer Critics Circle, among others, when it premiered, Edward Albee has, in Three Tall Women, created a masterwork of modern theater.
As an imperious, acerbic old woman lies dying, she is tended by two other women and visited by a young man. Albee’s frank dialogue about everything from incontinence to infidelity portrays aging without sentimentality. His scenes are charged with wit, pain, and laughter, and his observations tell us about forgiveness, reconciliation, and our own fates. But it is his probing portrait of the three women that reveals Albee’s genius. Separate characters on stage in the first act, yet actually the same “everywoman” at different ages in the second act, these “tall women” lay bare the truths of our lives—how we live, how we love, what we settle for, and how we die. Edward Albee has given theatergoers, critics, and students of drama reason to rejoice.
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