Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf Edward Albee

The US at the time – social context The US was going through a period of relative innocence with JF Kennedy at the helm The world was peaceful (largely) American traditional values appeared to be unshakeable However, underneath there was a degree of agitation as the Americans had a tense relationship with the Russians, blacks in America were trying to end racial discrimination and a number of writers were questioning their country’s values

Albee’s play It opened on Broadway on October 12 th 1962 and it was one of the first to articulate these ideas of dissatisfaction that were coming into public discourse It critically analysed the values of family, marriage and success and suggested these could have been created in part to escape from a reality that was not so happy Some found the play perverse, others a masterpiece – debate raged about it It was chosen for the Pulitzer Prize for Literature but the overseeing body (Columbia University) decided the language and taboo subjects made it too controversial to be given the award

Albee – the man He was adopted as a baby in 1928 to a family who was very wealthy. He lived in NYC. His childhood was pure luxury – holidays overseas, tutors, servants, many cars, riding lessons This did not give him complacency. It made him criticise, with his pen, the moral and spiritual damage inflicted by people who have material wealth and who chase the ‘American dream’

Albee continued… He lived in Greenwich Village when he was older and, at 30, finally published a play that garnered him world wide attention (The Zoo Story – a one act play) He was writing at the time of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller – formidable competition These writers all worked in realistic idiom – where the world onstage mirrored the real world They told stories that shouted the idea of men and women being responsible for their own fate

Theatre of the Absurd These writers and others in Europe (such as Samuel Beckett) at the time responded to the world differently and wanted the audience to be shaken out of complacency about their world They wanted the audience to feel a deep sense of anguish at the absurdity of the human condition – hence, Absurdists

Characteristics of this theatre type Speech is often confusing, not logical Language is often filled with jargon, cliches, nonsense. This is an attempt to raise the idea that language itself is quite empty and it cannot help to communicate real, deep feelings They are often a series of images or incidents that represent the human condition as the author sees it The plays are often funny, suggesting laughter is a response to the pain we have in life