America’s leading playwright Edward Albee, the author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – the bleakest of black domestic comedies – has died aged 88 at his home in Montauk, East Hampton.
A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he was arguably America's greatest living playwright after the deaths of Arthur Miller and August Wilson in 2005, Albee was awarded Pulitzers for A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women. Often bleakly humorous, his plays explored the darker sides of marriage, religion, raising children, and American life.
His best-known work, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a portrait of a decaying marriage set over one evening, was denied the 1963 Pulitzer Prize after debuting on Broadway the previous year. The work did win a Tony Award for best play, and was later adapted for a film starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. The prize's advisory board ruled that the work was not sufficiently "uplifting" because of its profanity and sexual themes.
In 1996 he described the effect of the play's success: "I find Virginia Woolf hung about my neck like a shining medal of some sort - really nice but a trifle onerous." The same year he was awarded a National Medal of the Arts by then-president Bill Clinton. Albee continued to write into his 70s, and 2008 saw the premiere of a new play, Me, Myself and I, about identical twins.
A few years ago, before undergoing major surgery, Albee penned a short statement to be published at the time of his death: "To all of you who have made my being alive so wonderful, so exciting and so full, my thanks and all my love," he wrote.
Albee's longtime partner, sculptor Jonathan Thomas, died in 2005. US playwright Edward Albee dies aged 88 BBC
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Michael Connell, is an Australian comedian who has a thing for philosophy, especially Stoicism, which he incorporates into his act (e.g., “How you think shapes how you feel. What I’m saying is that if you don’t enjoy this show, it’s your fault.”). I asked him to talk about his work and conveying philosophical ideas to non-philosophers (which includes most of the public and, of course, most of our students) in an enjoyable yet effective way—getting the right mix of humor and philosophy. At the end of his post is a video of one of his shows.
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