Edward Franklin Albee March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified and named the Theater of the Absurd.[1] Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.
His works are often considered frank 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 Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet.
His middle period comprised plays that explored the psychology of maturing, marriage, and sexual relationships. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's mix of theatricality and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent postwar American theatre in the early 1960s. Later in life, Albee continued to experiment in works such as The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002).
Is it a coincidence that the mixing of human's desperate need to establish connection and his exciting struggle to save the values of life in (Edward) Albee's theater?
Communicating and fighting the falling of time (or more precisely, the falling of the human world, which has become tangible due to the long existence of time) are actually one thing; same thing.If some have unhesitatingly placed Albi in the ranks of the so-called absurd dramatists, it is because they were deceived by some thematic similarities and did not see the transformation of his point of view .Although in Albi's theater, time and communication are not mutually exclusive, but in the absurd theater, the loneliness of man and the helplessness of the word (to create a connection) are presented as an ominous consequence of chaos (entropy) (for example, Unesco and Beckett's theater in France). in Albi's works, however, the opposite of this happens.Man's position in Albi's dramatic world is similar to his position in the probabilistic world.
In Albi's theater, whether it is due to ignorance, fear, or introspection, man leaves the world in the grip of chaos and becomes the toy of nothingness.And beyond this, sometimes he is the unknowing creator of a drama that he, unknowingly, plays one of its roles: he is the earthly agent of the decrees issued by the destructive powers of the world.In the play "American Dream" (Edward Albee) the same issue is also raised, but this time it is presented in the form of a comedy.There, once again, the struggle to save the values of human life is mixed with a strong criticism of the society.
The American Dream play begins with one of the situation-types of the absurd theater.Mami and Popi are waiting. But waiting for who? At first, the audience thinks that they are waiting for their landlords, then there are clear references to the welders who are supposed to come to fix the water leak in one of the bathroom faucets. Either way, "they'' are late. Expectation occurs as a manifestation of failure.At first sight, it seems that the unraveling of the "American dream" is based on a predetermined plan; But the fact is that the end of the play is the result of a series of blindness: The action of the show goes in any direction and aimlessly, and as the incident is revealed, the end of the show takes shape.
"Edward Albee or The Death of Godot: Towards Structuralist Playwriting" written by Bernadette Bushe, translated by Maziar Mohimani, in the book "The Death of Godot", Pierre Brunel, from page one hundred and fifty onwards, Drama Publications, first edition, year 1970