Playwright Edward Albee 'All Over' Princeton

Though he describes playwriting as "a tough racket" and discourages all but the most dedicated of young people from entering the field, Edward Albee has managed to become one of America's greatest living dramatists. At age seventy-three, he shows no signs of slowing down.

This month will mark the world-premieres of two new Albee plays, "The Play About the Baby" and "The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?" opening within days of each other in New York. Refusing to be left out of the Albee frenzy, the Princeton theater scene has apparently made February its own unofficial Albee month.

Though there will be no premieres, three of Albee's plays from throughout his career are set to open on campus in the coming weeks, and Albee himself will give a public lecture tonight at 8 p.m. in McCosh 10.

First up is a revival of Albee's death-bed drama "All Over" from the early seventies, which opens next week at McCarter Theater under the direction of Emily Mann. Set in the bedroom of a popular elderly gentleman on the day of his death, "All Over" unfolds the layers of complicated relationships between the men and women who loved him.

The nameless characters, who are referred to only by their relationship to the non-speaking dying man (e.g. The Wife, The Mistress, The Daughter), ride an emotional roller-coaster through the play's two acts as they confront the reality of mortality and the nature of human connection. Despite the ups and downs of "All Over," Albee claims that it, like "every one of my plays, is an act of optimism, because I make the assumption that it is possible to communicate with other people."

As he tends to do for major stagings of his works, be they revivals or premieres, Albee has involved himself substantially in the production process at McCarter. He has worked with Mann throughout the various phases from casting to rehearsals. While Mann has never before directed Albee's work, several of the lead actors, including the widely acclaimed Rosemary Harris, have collaborated on past productions with Albee.

Though for him the complete experience of a play comes while writing it, Albee does enjoy having his work produced "so that I can corrupt people," he says with tongue firmly in cheek.

Despite the importance of audience appeal for producers in the shows that they back, "You can't become an employee," cautions Albee. "You have to write what you think you have in your head," he insists, refusing to allow the public's response to his work, both critically and financially, to influence his writing.

Through a career that has spanned five decades, Albee has seen his favor with the audiences and critics come and go. But his strategy of writing for himself "because I have to" instead of "to make people comfortable" has propelled him to three Pulitzer prizes for drama, each in a different decade. "You have to go on the assumption you're doing good work and go on doing it," he said.

This tension between the audience and the author will be one of many subjects touched on in Albee's public lecture tonight. Part of the J. Edward Farnum lecture series, Albee's talk, titled "The Playwright versus the Theater," will address the state of American theater from his perspective of almost forty-five years of direct involvement.

Albee points without hesitation to the education of a younger audience as the most important change that needs to occur for American theater to flourish. "It starts in school. I went to Choate, Lawrenceville, private schools . . . so I was informed about all the arts when I was very young." By educating students about theater from a young age, Albee hopes that future audiences will "much prefer Sophocles to the musicals that are infesting our theaters now."

Students at Princeton will also have their go at two of Albee's early one act plays, "The American Dream" and "The Zoo Story," which will be presented together at Theatre~Intime later this month. This follows on the heels of Intime's production last season of another Albee masterpiece, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

With all the activity, both here and in New York, February will be a busy month for Albee. But March brings little relief, as he will head to Texas to teach his annual course on playwriting, in the hopes that "maybe I can persuade the right people to become playwrights."

And when he finally has a chance to catch his breath this summer, what will Albee do to recharge his batteries? "I'll probably write a play."