WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

by Edward Albee

 Performed at the Nuffield Theatre on 23rd to 27th June, 1981
 

CAST in order of appearance

THE PLAY

Time       The Present

Place      The living room of a house off the cloisters of a small New England College.

The Play is in two acts:-

ACT 1      Fun and Games

INTERVAL

ACT 11     The Exorcism

There will be a fading of the lights during Act II to mark the passing of one hour.

FOR THE MASKERS

The maskers would like to express their thanks to Mr. S. Rixon for assistance with this production

EDWARD ALBEE

Edward Franklin Albee, born on March 12, 1928, in Washington, was adopted as an infant by Mr. and Mrs. Reed A. Albee of the Keith-Albee theatre chain. He attended Trinity College in Hartford but left after a year and a half to work intermittently at such odd jobs as writing for a radio station and working as a counterman in a luncheonette. In 1952 he travelled to Florence where he wrote a novel that has never been published. Returning to New York in 1955, he worked as a Western Union messenger until 1958, when he quit his job to write The Zoo Story, a one-act play.

Unable to interest Broadway in this two-character study, Albee sent the manuscript to a friend in Florence, David Diamond, who in turn forwarded it to Mrs. Stefani Hunzinger, the head of the drama department of a German publisher. Finally, in 1959, The Zoo Story, coupled with Samuel Beckett's Krapp’s Last Tape, was presented at Berlin's Schiller Theater Werkstatt. Early in 1960 the two plays had their New York premiere Off Broadway. His next play, the Death of Bessie Smith, was first presented in Berlin in 1960 and appeared Off Broadway with The American Dream in 1961.

In October 1962, Albee made a successful Broadway debut with his first three-act play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? This vitriolic study of a decaying marriage established him as an important American playwright and won him an Antoinette Perry Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle award, and the Outer Circle Award. His later plays include The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1963) and Malcolm (wr. 1965), both adaptations of novels; Tiny Alice (1964); A Delicate Balance (1966), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize; and All Over (1971), a play about death.