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Edward Albee Edward Albee was born March 12, 1928. After realizing that he was not, alas, a painter, sculptor, or composer, he decided he was most likely a writer. Having tried his hand at prose (two abandoned texts he fondly dubs “The Worst Novels Ever Begun”) and poetry (a collection of poems he discarded in order to “save poetry from it”), Mr. Albee tried writing a play. In 1958—weeks from his 30th birthday—Edward Albee sat down and typed the now-famous opening line “I’ve been to the zoo,” and kept going. Mr. Albee has continued to write and direct plays, including The Zoo Story (1958), The Death of Bessie Smith (1959), The Sandbox (1959), The American Dream (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961–62; Tony Award), Tiny Alice (1964), A Delicate Balance (1966; Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award), All Over (1971), Seascape (1974; Pulitzer Prize), Listening (1975), Counting the Ways (1975), The Lady from Dubuque (1977–78), The Man Who Had Three Arms (1981), Finding the Sun (1982), Marriage Play (1986–87), Three Tall Women (1991; Pulitzer Prize), Fragments (1993), The Play About the Baby (1997), The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2000; 2002 Tony Award), Occupant (2001), At Home at the Zoo (Act 1, Homelife. Act 2, The Zoo Story) (2004), and Me, Myself & I (2007). He is a member of the Dramatists Guild Council, and President of The Edward F. Albee Foundation. Mr. Albee was awarded the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and received the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts. He is a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a four-time Tony Award winner (including a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement). He lives in New York City and Montauk, and is hard at work conceiving
his 30th play: Silence.
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