EDWARD ALBEE SCRIPT - OLSEN/BRANTLEY PROJECT 2576 CHAPTER 1 BIO and PROCESS COLD OPEN: 1:19:38.0 ALBEE: I think theater should be there to make people uncomfortable. Q: Are there any taboos left in theater? 1:19:46.6 ALBEE: Yes, you must not...taboos? Yes. I don’t think you should be allowed to bore an intelligent, responsive, sober, audience. (laughs) LAST WORD OPEN GRAPHIC AND MUSIC PHOTO: ALBEE GOOD RECENT PHOTO Tony awards: 1961-2 WAOVW 2000 The Goat 2005 Lifetime Achievement Pulitzer Prizes: A Delicate Balance 1966 Seascape 1974 Three Tall Women 1991 VO: EDWARD ALBEE WAS ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST IMPORTANT AND INFLUENTIAL PLAYWRIGHTS. A PROLIFIC ICONOCLAST, HE WAS COMMITTED TO THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF THEATER. A BRILLIANT WORDSMITH, HE STROVE TO CHALLENGE HIS AUDIENCE. OVER THE COURSE OF A FIFTY-YEAR CAREER IN THEATER, HE WROTE OVER 30 PLAYS, WON THREE TONY AWARDS AND THREE PULITZER PRIZES. HIS BEST KNOWN WORKS, PLAYS LIKE A DELICATE BALANCE, THREE TALL WOMEN, AND WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, ARE CONSIDERED ENDURING WORKS THAT UNFLINCHINGLY EXPLORE THE HUMAN CONDITION. THE NEW YORK TIMES SAT DOWN WITH ALBEE IN HIS NEW YORK APARTMENT IN MARCH OF 2008 TO DISCUSS HIS LIFE AND WORK. Q: I do think part of your strength is that you do make people uncomfortable in portraying sex and death, which are perennial subjects of the drama. you make people see it clearly in a way I’m not sure they always want to. 0:43:41.3 0:43:41.3 ALBEE: And other things as well, that’s true, but I do seem to produce discomfort in some people. In my play, The Goat or Who Is Sylvia which was about sex and about death actually, in somewhat different ways, I had walkouts every night. *ALBEE: When I wrote The Goat, I guess I was interested in writing a play about the limits of our tolerance and finding a subject in which was bestiality and man. Having a love affair, not only sex with but a true emotional love affair with a goat, which upset his family considerably. I kept wondering when people would walk out. They were going to walk at some time you know when the announce of the subject in the play, that didn’t seem to disturb too many people. When the father talks about the fact that once when he was dandling his son, his baby son on his knee it gave him an erection. That didn’t seem to upset too many people. When I had Christ referred to as an intentional suicide, not too many people got up. But when the family’s gay adolescent son kissed his father sexually, I don’t know, what they thought I’d done, they jumped up and kept leaving. And I said, really is that the limit of our tolerance? Where are we as a civilization? /// I don’t hammer people over the head with politics of my plays, but I’d like to hold a mirror up to people and say hey, this is the way you behave, this is who you are, if you don’t like what you see, maybe you should change. Archival photos? Playbills or posters for: Jumbo /Jimmy Durante Hells-a-poppin Yearbook photo from Choate and or Lawrenceville EDWARD FRANKLIN ALBEE WAS BORN IN VIRGINIA IN 1928. HE WAS ADOPTED AT A VERY YOUNG AGE AND NEVER KNEW HIS BIOLOGICAL PARENTS. HOME LIFE WITH HIS ADOPTIVE FAMILY WAS DIFFICULT, AND YOUNG EDWARD...ALWAYS FEELING HIMSELF AN OUTSIDER...REBELLED. // I was adopted by this wealthy theatrical management family, the Keith-Albee vaudeville people in Larchmont, New York. //We didn’t get along particularly well. Very early I didn’t like their values. They were right wing to the point, to the right of Genghis Khan I think. And they were bigots, I thought, anti-black, anti-Semitic, and you know it was a good chance to get ruined there // But they did one very good thing, they gave me an extraordinary education, private schools, Lawrenceville, Choate, where I had teachers who understood, because even when I was eight years-old I was starting to paint and draw and write, understood that I was determined to do something in the creative arts and ke