1 / 7

Drama Unit

Drama Unit. Edward Albee’s “The Sandbox” Background on Albee Theatre of the Absurd. Edward Albee (1928-present). Adopted by prominent theatre family (co-owners of R-K-O) Family wanted him to pursue more conventional career Broke with family @ 20 Moved to Greenwich Village, immersed in arts

wylie-keith
Download Presentation

Drama Unit

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Drama Unit Edward Albee’s “The Sandbox” Background on Albee Theatre of the Absurd

  2. Edward Albee (1928-present) • Adopted by prominent theatre family (co-owners of R-K-O) • Family wanted him to pursue more conventional career • Broke with family @ 20 • Moved to Greenwich Village, immersed in arts • Failed at poetry and fiction before pursuing playwriting

  3. Early Works • 1959: “Zoo Story”: drifter provokes conventional man to violence – human alienation • “The Sandbox” and “The American Dream” bring Theatre of Absurd to America • “The Death of Bessie Smith” – American racial conflict

  4. Major Works • 1962: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: tortured marriages erupt at a dinner party • Tony Award • Pulitzer declined committee recommendation and did not present a drama award that year • 1967: A Delicate Balance: blends realism of Wolf with absurdism from earlier plays • Pulitzer Prize

  5. 1975: Seascape: one human and one lizard couple meet on a beach and discuss “love, relationships, and the evolutionary process” • Pulitzer Prize • 1994: Three Tall Women: reconciles memory of his mother • Pulitzer Prize • 2004: The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?:"It's about four human beings and a goat . . . and it involves relationships." • Tony Award

  6. Theatre of the Absurd • Closely related to Existentialism, Dadaism, and Surrealism • Humans are disoriented, helpless & alienated • Actions are unmotivated and meaningless (absurd) • Major figures: Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, Pinter, Stoppard, Albee, Strindberg, some Ibsen

  7. Citations • http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/alb1bio-1 • http://www.curtainup.com/goat.html • http://www.uaf.edu/sda/spring01.html • http://www.theatredatabase.com/20th_century/theatre_of_the_absurd.html

More Related