Edward Albee III

writer, 1967, 1975, 1994 Pulitzer Prizes

Edward Franklin Albee III (born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright best known for works, *Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?*, *The Zoo Story*, *The Sandbox*, and *The American Dream*. His works are considered well-crafted and often unsympathetic 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 Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, and Eugne Ionesco. Albee was one of the early American contributors to Theatre of the Absurd. His play, *The Zoo Story*, was written and debuted in 1958. While Theatre of the Absurb spans a wide range of work, Albee's work tends to focus on the problem of alienation, anomie and isolation in modern society. Even his famous *Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?*, which appears to be a simple dinner party between two couples, displays the profound alienation and interpersonal, emotional violence in the relationship between its main pair, "George and Martha."