Interview: Edward Albee
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

You weren't exactly a poster child for success in school, we understand.

Edward Albee: Well -- no.

I got thrown out of a lot of schools, yeah, because I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be home either. I didn't want to be anywhere I was. But, I managed to get an education before I got thrown out, in the stuff that interested me. Teachers seemed to sense that, in some terribly unformed way, there might be something going on in the mind there that should be encouraged. So, they would encourage me towards the things that interested me. And, that was nice. So, I'd learn something at one school, get thrown out, go to another and learn some more.

Were there teachers who influenced you? Who were important to you?

Edward Albee: Oh sure.

There were some teachers who were very, very helpful and, as I say, sensed that maybe I had a mind worth cultivating, and pointed me in the right direction to a lot of things. I can't be specific about it, but I know that was going on. These are all private schools, not public schools in the bowels of the city. These were private schools, a lot of wealthy kids there. But, the teachers were paid fairly well, and they were better educated than their students -- which is not necessarily true in many of our public school systems now -- and some bright people. They had small classes -- seven or eight kids in a class -- and they could spend time finding out who the kids were. I'm very, very grateful that, even though I didn't get along with my adoptive parents, they did offer me an extraordinarily good education.

You say you started writing poetry at eight or nine.

Edward Albee: Yeah. I'd already started drawing before then.

What do you think motivated you to do that?

Edward Albee: Probably because I thought I was a painter, and I thought I was a writer.

You left college early, didn't you?

Edward Albee: Yes, I did. It was a mutual agreement.

I was not going to many of the courses I was supposed to in my freshman and sophomore year. I was going to a lot of interesting courses the seniors were taking, getting a good education on a graduating level, and of course, being marked absent and failing my required courses. They didn't like that. And, they gave me a choice: go to the courses I was supposed to, or leave. So I left. I was the one being educated; I thought I should have some say as to the nature of my education. Foolish notion.

You also left home for good after that, didn't you?

Edward Albee: Yes, I did. I tried first when I was 13, because one of my grandmothers had given me little Christmas presents, and I had a few hundred dollars. So I went into New York with my little suitcase and tried to get on an ocean liner -- Cunard, or whatever the line was -- and discovered that I didn't have enough money. Also, I didn't have any identification or anything, and they weren't going to let me on board the ship.

Where did you want to go?

Edward Albee: Anywhere. London or Paris, probably Paris. But that didn't work out. So I waited until we were so completely fed up with each other there was nothing for it.

When you left home, you went to Greenwich Village in New York City. What were you looking for?

Edward Albee: I guess I'd been told that Greenwich Village was where whatever intellectual ferment was going on in New York was going on. That's where all the interesting people were. So I went there.

And you found it?

Edward Albee: Yeah. It was very easy in those days. Nobody had agents. Nobody was famous.

What did you do when you got there?

Edward Albee: I completed -- or not completed -- continued my education, by going to see all the great abstract expressionist paintings, and listening to all the contemporary music up at Columbia at McMillan Theatre, going to see all the wonderful off-off Broadway plays. The paperback book market was around, so when I couldn't steal a book I could buy it real cheap. It was good. And, there were a lot of saloons that we all went to, all the writers. All the painters, of course, would go to the Cedar Bar, and you would go there and watch them fall down. It was sort of nice. And, then all the writers would be going to -- what was that bar on the corner of Bleecker and McDougall called? San Remo. Everybody would be there, sitting around talking. And, if you wanted to be with the young composers you'd go up to the Russian Tea Room -- not the Russian Tea Room -- there was a bar on the southwest corner of Carnegie Hall. I forget what it was called. And, all the composers would be there. We all knew each other. Everybody was friendly. Yes, it was a nice time. I spent about 10 years. My post-graduate work, yeah.

How did you support yourself?

Edward Albee: One of my grandmothers had given me a tiny inheritance, which kept me in beer and sandwiches, and sharing a tiny apartment with five or six of my very close friends. And also I would take jobs from time to time. The only one I liked was delivering telegrams for Western Union. That was a good job. You'd show up when you wanted to, and if you were really clever, you could earn tips very easily.

What persuaded you -- or compelled you -- to become a writer?

Edward Albee: I don't know. I knew I was going to be involved in the arts in some fashion when I was very young. That's why I wanted to be a composer, and did painting and drawing and writing. It just seemed inevitable to me. That's who I was, therefore that's what I would do. It's just the way the mind works.

Was there a defining moment?

Edward Albee: No. Was it hearing Bach for the first time? Was it seeing a great painting? Was it reading Turgenev? Or all together? I can't be sure. I don't know.

How did your first play, The Zoo Story, come about?

Edward Albee: I don't remember.

I know that I liberated a large typewriter from the Western Union company and dragged it down to the apartment I was sharing with all my friends, and just started writing this play. It took me two weeks. It's called The Zoo Story. I'd been writing a lot of stuff until then. I'd made a couple of half-assed attempts at plays which I never finished, and all of a sudden I wrote The Zoo Story, and I had a very odd sensation: "This isn't bad. This may even be individual." It's the first thing I ever wrote that I could say, "You wrote this. All the influences have been put aside, and put under. You've learned enough. This is your voice." I was aware of that at the time. That was a good feeling.

It's been written that you considered it a 30th birthday present to yourself. Is that true?

Edward Albee: Pretty much. That may be after the fact. You know, here I was delivering telegrams at Western Union, which is okay to do if you're a kid, but you can't go on into your 50s doing it. You've got to have some other kind of career.

How do you go about it? How do you write a play?

Edward Albee: It's very hard to explain to anybody who isn't a playwright. If you're a playwright -- that's why I was not a very good poet, and a bad novelist, and a bad short story writer. And then, I wrote a play and I figured out that's what I was supposed to be doing all my life. And, also I just think that every writer -- everybody in any of the arts -- has a particular time when they can become individual. It's different from people. You know, some people, they're doing it when they're 18. Some don't get to it until they're 50. And The Zoo Story was that moment where I knew I'd written something good -- and individual. And you just take off from there. That's when it happens.

Can you say what inspired it?

Edward Albee: The Zoo Story? No. No idea. In retrospect? Sure. I was obviously analyzing two opposite people: one had compromised too much on the way to adulthood, and the other was compromising nowhere at all. And there was bound to be a clash. But that's merely plot. I don't know, really. I never know.

The only play that I've known what began it, was when I wrote a play about Bessie Smith, the great black blues singer who was allowed to die outside of Memphis in 1937, because she was black and the hospitals were white. Even there, she's not in the play, her blood is. But, with the exception of that one, I write my plays to find out why I'm writing them -- what's going on in my head that is turning into a play. And, I become aware that it's turning into a play, and so I write it down. So, simple and so easy and so true.

You make it sound so simple.

Edward Albee: Well it is. I'm not one of these didactic playwrights who says, "I must now write a play about..." this or that subject, and find some characters. It comes into focus very slowly for me. When it's sufficiently into focus, I can hear the characters, know them, and put them in their action.

How would you describe the writer's life? What's it take to do it?

Edward Albee: I imagine each writer's life is very individual. Some of us have great celebrity, others keep fairly quiet and nobody knows who we are, which is nice. Some people have commercial success, some people don't. There is no such thing as "the writer's life." There is merely that time when you're sitting upstairs, or wherever you sit, and you're writing something. That's very special, and probably very individual for each person, too.

For you as an individual, what did it take to write what you have written?

Edward Albee: Ideas that come into my head that I've got to get out of my head. That simple. I'm a playwright, therefore I write plays. That's what I do, that's what I am. I think it's true with all creative people. Some people are composers. Some people don't get it right. You know, Henry James thought he should be a playwright. He was wrong. Arthur Miller thought he should be a novelist. He was wrong. They figured it out right.

How do you see the writer's place in society?

Edward Albee: Peripheral! Tolerated, perhaps.

Writing should be useful. If it can't instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness, there's no point in doing it. But, we all write because we don't like what we see, and we want people to be better and different. Sure, that's why we do it.

So there is a purpose?

Edward Albee: Of course. There's a purpose to everything -- except the Republican Party, perhaps -- except possibly to teach us fear and loathing.

In any career, there are setbacks, there are disappointments. How have you dealt with that?

Edward Albee: I think you've got to assume that nobody promised you a rose garden. Sometimes it's going to be okay, and sometimes it's going to be tough. But, if you haven't got a sufficient sense of self to surmount either failure or success, you're in trouble. I know that some of my plays that have been least popular are some of the best ones. They'll figure it out eventually. I've never lacked self confidence in my talent as a writer. This sounds wrong. It sounds terrible, but it's true. I've never had doubts about my ability as a writer.

Have you ever suffered from self-doubt or fear of failure?

Edward Albee: No. No. No. But now that I'm getting very old there's the possibility that my mind is going.

Do you know that wonderful story about Bernard Shaw? That when he got into his 90s -- I hope it's true -- he was reading one of his earlier plays one day, and he was having trouble understanding it. So, he rewrote it and simplified it so he could understand it. They had to take his work away from him because he was doing that. [Laughter] It might have helped some of them.

You don't anticipate doing that yourself.

Edward Albee: Oh God, I hope not! I hope they'll take them away from me if I do that.

No matter what the field, you can't please all the people all the time, especially when you're subjected to reviews and criticism. How do you handle that?

Edward Albee: Why should one be interested in doing that? Every play has its own density, its own specific gravity. Some plays are simple, some plays are more complex. Some are experimental, some are naturalistic. If you're trying to please everybody all the time, you're bound to fail.

So you have to have the courage of your convictions?

Edward Albee: You have to write the play that's in your head, and make the assumption that your talent hasn't collapsed, and that if people will pay attention, they might learn something.

Are you a risk taker? Is it important to take risks as a playwright?

I don't get up every morning and say, "Now, can I find some risks I have to take?" No. But, I don't think I've compromised either. I don't think I've ever said to myself, "Gee, this is going to be an unpopular subject. Maybe I'd better not write it." Or, "Gee, maybe I'd better simplify here." No. Nor do I do the reverse -- try to make myself look better by making them more complicated. No. You write what's in your head.

Which part of the process is more important for you, the initial writing or rewriting?

Edward Albee: I don't rewrite. Well, not much. I think I probably do all the rewriting that I'm going to do before I'm aware that I'm writing the play because obviously, the creativity resists -- resides -- in the unconscious, right? Probably resists the unconscious, too -- resides in the unconscious. My plays, I think, are pretty much determined before I become aware of them. I think they formulated there, and then they move into the conscious mind, and then onto the page. By the time I'm willing to commit a play to paper, I pretty much know -- or can trust -- the characters to write the play for me. So, I don't impose. I let them have their heads and say and do what they want, and it turns out to be a play.

With Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, you won widespread recognition. It was a commercial success as well as a critical success.

Edward Albee: And it was my first play that was any longer than 55 minutes.

How does that affect you?

Edward Albee: What? That it was any longer than 55 minutes?

No, celebrity.

Edward Albee: I'm not a celebrity. I don't think in those terms anyway.

I was delighted that people liked it. That's fine. But they liked The Zoo Story and An American Dream and The Death of Bessie Smith and The Sandbox also. They liked those too, but this was different. This was on Broadway, therefore it was meant to be a rival -- ridiculous attitudes like that. Commercial theater. You put up with that stuff.

You know, I've written -- what -- 28 plays now. I think the majority of them had their world premieres in small theaters. And of my 28 plays, maybe no more than half have been on Broadway. And, I don't care. Most Broadway theaters are too big. I would much prefer a 400-seat theater to a 900-seat theater anytime for my plays, which are basically chamber plays. And, I find the audiences -- the smaller the theater, the more alert the audiences are, and the younger they are, and the more intelligent they are. So, I'd be perfectly happy never to have another play on Broadway, except maybe you have a responsibility to hit those people, too.

In your line of work, what gives you, personally, your greatest sense of satisfaction?

Edward Albee: Not selling out. Not lying. Putting (my plays) down the way they want to be, and not compromising in production or casting or anything of that sort. I've been pretty much able to be my own person, which is nice. Maybe that was made fairly easy for me by the initial success of Virginia Woolf. There are all these pressures on you to sell out and do something different, but I've got a kind of orneriness to me: this is the play that I wrote, and this is damn well the play I want done.

Have you ever had to compromise?

Edward Albee: There were a couple of times where I wasn't happy in some of the casting that I had to put up with, but no.

I made one experiment. I said, "All right. Everybody tells me that this is a collaborative art." Something that I've never believed, by the way. It is a creative act, and then there are people who do it for you. With one play I said, "Okay. All these people think they're so bright. I will do whatever they want." Without changing the text. And, I put up with a lot of stuff that I didn't like very much, or didn't really approve of. It was a fiasco. And, if I'm going to have a fiasco, I want it to be on my terms. I like to take my own credit and my own blame because I can make as many mistakes as the next person, you know. But, I think my mistakes are more interesting.

They are to me, anyway.

Looking back, what do you know about achievement now that you didn't know or understand when you were younger?

Edward Albee: I'm not even sure I was thinking in those terms when I was starting out. I'm not even sure that I think much about them now, either. But I think it's being able to do pretty well what you think is useful. That's basically it. Because all art has got to be useful. If it's merely decorative or escapist, it's a waste of time. You write whatever you write to try to make people behave the way you want them to behave, make them think the way you think they should be thinking. If they behave themselves, good; if they don't, tough! The achievement is holding on to that goal, I suppose.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "useful?"

Edward Albee: All art is useful because it tells us more about consciousness. It should engage us into thinking and re-evaluating, re-examining our values to find out whether the stuff we think we've been believing for 20 years still has any validity. Art's got to help us understand that values change. If we've stopped exploring the possibilities of our mind, then we're asleep, and why not just stay asleep? So, all art has got to be utilitarian and useful. That's one of the great things about African art. It's not made as art. It's utilitarian. It's made for religious, dance purposes. And, people who make it don't think of themselves, "Gee, I'm a great sculptor." No. They're making something useful. I think this is true with novels, plays, poems. I think basically all serious creative people feel the same way. Most of us are smart enough not to talk about it.

You talk about "values." There's a lot of talk about values in America today. What do you make of that?

Edward Albee: So many words get misused all the time. I don't think much about my values. I know what they are, if anybody pins me down.

I will do whatever I possibly can to save us from the forces of darkness that are trying to take over our democracy, and that I believe we are a slowly, peacefully evolving revolutionary society. That's what we were formed as by the merchant class, and that's why it should be a peacefully evolving society. I try to keep us awake to the fact that democracy demands informed voting, and that democracy is fragile. And, if we don't stay on top of things we'll get what we deserve -- as we seem to be doing right now.

And I do think that all art is fundamentally political, in the large philosophical sense.

Would you say that in your work there is a message?

Edward Albee: Probably. I hope there are a bunch of them. Participate in your own life -- fully. Don't sink back into that which is easy and safe. You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?

When you started out, could you have imagined that you would have won three Pulitzer Prizes?

Edward Albee: Hmmph! It's not very many.

How important is that to you?

Edward Albee: Look, if they're giving out awards, it's nice to get them. So every time I get one, I'm surprised. And every time I don't get one, I'm surprised. I live in a constant state of surprise!

How do you measure achievement? How do you measure success?

Edward Albee: I can't do it in my own work, because I can't look at my own work that way. If I read a book, go to a play, see a painting, or hear a piece of music that makes me expand the parameters of my response -- makes me think differently, makes me think more completely about something -- then I've had a useful experience. Otherwise, as I said, it's merely decorative and a waste of time.

Is there anything you haven't done that you would like to do?

Edward Albee: Parachute jumping! I'd like to do that, if I could be guaranteed that the damn thing would open and I wouldn't break both my legs when I landed. That would be fun to do. No, I would just like to keep on writing plays for awhile so that I can get better -- and more useful.

Do you think there's always room for improvement?

Edward Albee: Always. Sure. That's why I believe I'm getting -- right now, this weekend -- a thing called the Lifetime Achievement Award from Broadway, which strikes me as a little premature. I haven't done my lifetime work yet. But I suppose they have to give it to you too early if they're going to give it to you before you're dead.

What idea or problem or challenge most concerns you in America in the early 21st century?

Edward Albee: The dangers to democracy on the part of an electorate that I think is voting far too selfishly.

Most of our voting doesn't have anything to do with what is going to be most good for the most people. It's selfish and uninformed voting. I find that terribly dangerous. That can kill a democracy very, very quickly. I find that the inroads on civil liberties in our society are terribly dangerous. There's never been any danger from the far left to the United States. The death of democracy is fascism, and I see us moving closer and closer to that compliance all the time, and that worries me a lot.

Will you write about that?

Edward Albee: I think I always do, but I'm not going to write a didactic political play, because that's a rant, and there's no point in it. If I can just try to persuade people to stay awake, live life fully, don't sell out, don't compromise. Encourage people to do that, then there's hope.

If one of these young people came to you seeking advice, what would it be?

Edward Albee: Try to get into your own mind a little bit. Figure out what it is you want to do with your life, what you really want to do, who you really are. Don't waste your life doing something that you're going to end up being bored with, or feel was futile or a waste of time. It's your life, live it as fully and as usefully as you possibly can. "Useful" being the most important thing there. Life must be lived usefully, not selfishly. And a usefully lived life is probably going to be, ultimately, more satisfying.

One last question: How would you like to be remembered?

Edward Albee: I would rather go on than be remembered.

Anything we didn't cover that you think is important to cover?

Edward Albee: Let's see, we didn't talk about the three most important things that playwrights like to talk about: sex, money and food.

Feel free.

Edward Albee: Now we don't have any time. What a pity!

Thank you very much.

You're welcome. Nice talking to you.