Edward Albee Interview

What was it like for you growing up in and around New York City as a kid?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Edward Albee: I was an adopted kid, and I was raised by this wealthy family who had been involved in theater management -- vaudeville management, the Keith-Albee vaudeville circuit. And so, the house would be filled with retired vaudeville performers all the time. So, I got to meet Billy Gaxton, Victor Moore and Ed Wynn, and all those people that nobody's ever heard of. And, I started going to the theater when I was really young. I think when I was six years old I went to see Jumbo at the old Hippodrome theater, that musical with Jimmy Durante and an elephant. That was my first experience in the theater. So, I was raised on live theater, which was about the only good thing about the adoption.

How would you describe yourself as a kid?

Edward Albee: Forming myself, I suppose.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I never felt comfortable with the adoptive parents. I don't think they knew how to be parents. I probably didn't know how to be a son, either. And, I stayed pretty much to myself. I had a fairly active inner life. I certainly didn't relate to much of anything they related to. They sent me away to school when I was nine, ten years old, not to have me around. So, that was fine. It was all right. I took care of myself.

Did you like school?

Edward Albee: Yes, I liked school, only when I was doing the stuff that I wanted to do. I was always very, very good at the classes that interested me and very bad at the ones that didn't. I think I knew very, very young -- or at least had some inkling of -- the direction that my life was going to take. I was always interested in the arts. I started painting and drawing when I was eight years old and writing poetry when I was nine or 10. I wanted to be a composer after I discovered Bach when I was 12 and a half, but that didn't work out. He was too good!

How do you explain that? Why do you think you knew what you wanted to do at such a young age?

Edward Albee: I don't know. Obviously, it's the way my mind works, or worked at the time. Those things interested me. I have no idea who my natural parents were. Back in the days when I was adopted, you weren't allowed to find that sort of thing out. So I couldn't. But I don't think that matters much, anyway. Some of the brightest kids that I've known, I've met their parents and I can't believe that there was any relationship between them.

When you were growing up, were there any books that were important to you? What did you read?

Edward Albee: Oh, sure. I read as much as I could. I have a funny story.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The family had a big library in their huge house in Larchmont, leather-bound books. And, I was looking for a book to read one night. I was 14 maybe, 13. Who was this Ivan Tur-gun-eff? Turgenev, of course. So, I took one of the books out of the library. It was Virgin Soil, as a matter of fact, and I read it. And, the next morning I came down for breakfast -- the family had to have breakfast together, it was a formality -- and they were rather cool, I thought. I said, "What's the matter?" They said, "There is a book missing from the library." I said, "Yes, it's by Ivan Tur-gun-eff, " not pronouncing his name correctly. "And it's a wonderful book. I took it upstairs..." "It belongs in the library. You have left a gap on the shelves." That gives you some idea of the disparity between our points of view.

What was it about your early family life that troubled you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Edward Albee: I never felt that I related to these people, which may be interesting, because most kids are trapped into feeling an obligation to their natural parents. For what? For being born, I guess. Foolish notion, but still. And, since I didn't relate to these people, and I knew that I wasn't from them, I had a kind of objectivity about the whole relationship. This is all second-guessing, of course, but I suspect it probably was in my mind. I am a permanent transient. That's probably where that line in The Zoo Story came from! "I'm a permanent transient. My home is the sickening rooming houses on the Upper West Side of New York City, which is the greatest city in the world. Amen!" I bet that's where that line came from, in The Zoo Story.

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