Broadway to Dim Lights in Memory of Edward Albee
(© Tristan Fuge)
The marquees of New York's Broadway theaters will be dimmed on September 21 at exactly 7:45pm for one minute in honor of Edward Albee, three-time Tony Award and three-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, producer, and director. Albee died on September 16 at the age of 88.
Best known for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, his first full-length play and Tony-winning Broadway debut in 1962, Albee received Pulitzer Prizes for A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975) and Three Tall Women (1994). Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was selected for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize by the award's drama jury, but was overruled by the advisory committee, which elected not to give a drama award at all. The jury subsequently resigned in protest. The play also became a 1966 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Albee's longtime partner, sculptor Jonathan Thomas, died in 2005.
"Edward Albee was one of our most influential and most honored American playwrights and a master of words, with nearly thirty plays on Broadway," said Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League, in a statement. "The outpouring of accolades and personal memories being shared since his death are a tribute to a dramatist who deeply affected audiences and inspired so many fellow writers with his brilliant dialogue and indelible characters. An original voice, Albee created some of the most complex and compelling works presented on stage in the past six decades."
