Author Bio
PrintInterview or Who’s Afraid of Mr. Albee?
by Eric Wallacha play in one scene
Based on an interview with Edward Albee conducted by Eric Wallach at Mr. Albee’s Tribeca loft in New York City on March 15, 2005.
(The curtain rises on Mr. Albee’s loft. The INTERVIEWER is sitting on the couch looking over his notes. He stops reading, cleans his glasses, goes back to reading. MR. ALBEE enters.)
MR. ALBEE
Good morning.
INTERVIEWER
(He gets up and shakes hands with MR. ALBEE) Good morning. (Sitting down again) I brought something for you. To say thank you with a little happy birthday thrown in.
MR. ALBEE
(Sitting on a leather swivel chair) Well, thank you. (He pulls a white box out of a brown paper bag)
INTERVIEWER
Some dried cranberries, apricots and strawberries.
MR. ALBEE
I’ll open it later. Would you like some water?
INTERVIEWER
No thanks. (Knowing full well Mr. Albee hasn’t had a drink in thirty years) You don’t do any heavy drinking in the morning?
MR. ALBEE
(Glaring) What?
INTERVIEWER
(Positioning his minidisk recorder between them) Do I remember correctly?
MR. ALBEE
I haven’t had a drink in thirty years.
INTERVIEWER
That’s right. (Pause) Did you drink while you wrote Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
MR. ALBEE
(Upset, shakes his head) Now why go there? Drinking. Really?!
INTERVIEWER
(Trying) I just, I just wanted to know whether you’ve witnessed any drunken rehearsals of the play?
MR. ALBEE
Absolutely not, never. No writer, no director, no actor can do their work while drunk. You can’t do it. You’ve got to be thinking all the time.
INTERVIEWER
(Looking around) You have no stereo down here?
MR. ALBEE
Why?
INTERVIEWER
I was hoping to hear some Bach. I have no Bach in my music collection. And, uh, in one of your many interviews you said that you advise your playwrighting students that they should listen to a Bach fugue every morning. What’s Bach got?
MR. ALBEE (Overlapping)
I never said every morning. I said that a writer should listen to a fugue before they begin their writing. To clear up the mind. (With the slightest of grins) You should try it.
INTERVIEWER
(Repositioning the microphone) I will. (Silence) It was great seeing you last Saturday night at your first New York performance of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. From where I was sitting I could see you in your house right box, legs propped up on a chair in front of you. I never saw you take your eyes off the stage.
MR. ALBEE
Where else should I be looking?
INTERVIEWER
You never once looked at the audience.
MR. ALBEE
I can hear them.
INTERVIEWER
The audience was raucous. The laughter was constant through the first act.
MR. ALBEE
Were you watching them or watching me?
INTERVIEWER
I was watching the play.
MR. ALBEE
(Deep breath) Preview audiences are usually younger, they have more energy, they get more involved…they at least haven’t come to the theater after drinking four martinis.
INTERVIEWER
(Pause) Just to let you know, I’m still working on the screenplay that I began at The Barn in August of 2003. I’m now on draft six.
MR. ALBEE
Draft six?
INTERVIEWER
The screenplay keeps changing course.
MR. ALBEE
I’d worry about that. You lose your spontaneity. You start trying to make things happen as opposed to letting it come out naturally.
INTERVIEWER
(Checking his list of questions) You first saw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 43 years ago. Few writers have had the opportunity to see their work develop over so many years, do you feel it resonates today in ways that it didn’t when you first wrote it?
MR. ALBEE
It’s the same play.
INTERVIEWER
Yes, but has the audience changed? Back in the ‘60s the government was lying and deceiving the people but they weren’t as aware of it as they are now. Right?
MR. ALBEE (Overlapping)
Now people know the truth…but prefer the lies.
INTERVIEWER
You’ve said that Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is about the “failure of the principals of the American Revolution”—what did you mean by that?
MR. ALBEE
I said that to confuse the academics. But yes, Nick is named after Nikita Khrushchev who was threatening our country at the time. George and Martha are named after the Washingtons. Technology was threatening human expression, art, culture.
(Pause) You know Honey’s name isn’t Honey, right? (Pause) That’s just what Nick calls her.
INTERVIEWER
Funny.
MR. ALBEE
And the only way you know his name, is if you read the play.
INTERVIEWER
Why is Honey so wild for violence?
MR. ALBEE
She just is. That’s her nature.
INTERVIEWER
You seem to love shocking your audience. In all your plays you find a way to unnerve your audience into the world of the play.
MR. ALBEE
I don’t like terms like that. Shock. I don’t want to shock; I want to involve.
INTERVIEWER
You start The Play About the Baby with two nude actors running around the stage. That’s not shocking?
MR. ALBEE
In the stage directions I wrote, “Nakedly.” Nakedly. (Hidden smile) They weren’t nude, unless they wanted to be.
INTERVIEWER
What are your expectations of your audience?
MR. ALBEE
I want them to be sober, listening and they need to have a willingness to suspend their disbelief.
INTERVIEWER
When you direct, you tell your actors, “Do what you want, as long as you get to what I want.” What is it that you want from your actors?
MR. ALBEE
I want real characters living in a three-dimensional world.
INTERVIEWER
What do you want when you curate art shows?
MR. ALBEE
I want space. Unencumbered. Nothing to pull away the attention of the viewer. Space to look at each work without distraction.
INTERVIEWER
How do you encourage writers to discover their own true voice?
MR. ALBEE
True voice? What’s that? You can’t teach it at all; it’s inherent or not.
INTERVIEWER
Who do you find funny?
MR. ALBEE
I used to find politics funny. Not anymore. It’s real scary these days.
INTERVIEWER
I couldn’t agree more. (Pause) In what ways have your plays had a cathartic effect on your life?
MR. ALBEE
It hasn’t really. (Pause) Well, except I suppose exorcising my adopted mother in Three Tall Women. (Grinning) Haven’t thought of her since. So there’s that.
INTERVIEWER
You’ve seen so much theatre over the years, can you tell me about the moments in the theatre that you savor?
MR. ALBEE
I’ve seen a lot of things and I don’t remember the details at all. It’s gone.
INTERVIEWER
(Pause) Will society ever stop needing new plays?
MR. ALBEE
No. Will they still see plays is another question.
INTERVIEWER
How will theater adapt itself if it’s going to remain essential?
MR. ALBEE
We’ll always need storytellers. (His cell phone rings) Is that all your questions? Did we get through it? (He gets up and walks away) Hello?
INTERVIEWER
I think so. (He checks through his notes then pauses his minidisk recorder) Oh my god. (He starts panicking, pushing buttons in silence) Wow.
MR. ALBEE
(Into phone) Alright, goodbye. (He walks back slowly and sits) What? (Noticing) You didn’t get it?
INTERVIEWER
(To himself) Unbelievable…ok. So we’re starting back…unbelievable. (Slams his hand down then takes a moment to look at MR. ALBEE) It happens some times that, ah, you can’t record the beautiful things. Some moments can’t be recorded.
MR. ALBEE
Well you remember all my answers to your questions—my evasions.
INTERVIEWER
Yeah? (Doubtful) For the most part. I could get some refreshers though. (Bites his lip, pained) Would you mind me writing your lines?
MR. ALBEE
In this situation I would type something up and send it to me so that I can correct my mistakes. And yours. (Laughs)
INTERVIEWER
You know, I had a revelation about the interview in that…it’s going to be you and me and…it’s going to emerge, something will emerge, something will have happened.
MR. ALBEE
Well, something happened.
INTERVIEWER
(Long pause as he scribbles notes) I suppose it’s not a surprise, you know, when technology doesn’t come through?
MR. ALBEE
Of course not, I know.
INTERVIEWER
You’re a lot funnier than I’m going to be able to…so I hope you’re gonna be able to bring some of the good…(Hatcha, snap, snap)
MR. ALBEE
That’s the trouble; humor very, very, very seldom transcribes.
INTERVIEWER
No, that’s true.
MR. ALBEE
Practically never.
INTERVIEWER
(Annoyed) But an interview, it’s meant to be read just like your plays…
MR. ALBEE
Because comic timing cannot be transcribed onto paper. (Points at the minidisk recorder) So, is it still broken?
INTERVIEWER
No, it’s rolling now. I was wondering if you would mind if I could just go back through my notes and—Ugh, it’s the worst!
MR. ALBEE
Oh, we’ll just have to revise six times.
INTERVIEWER
I find it a little depressing because I do like what’s real in an interview and somehow we’re going to have to write it. That’s a crap…
MR. ALBEE
Well you’re gonna have to be a playwright.
INTERVIEWER
(Shuffling through his papers) Your economy of words is astounding, the way you chisel your scripts so that there’s no word in excess.
MR. ALBEE
I hope not. I learn that from people like Beckett and Chekhov.
INTERVIEWER
(Pause) Rhythm?
MR. ALBEE
By wanting to be a composer and knowing a great deal about music. And understanding that a playwright notates the same way a composer does. Half notes, quarter notes, dotted eighth notes. Fast, slow, loud, soft.
INTERVIEWER
Do you hear Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as a quartet all the time?
MR. ALBEE
Oh sure.
INTERVIEWER
What were the qualities of Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner that made you gravitate to them?
MR. ALBEE
Contrasting manners. Overboard for Kathleen, underneath to the same goal for Bill. Intelligence on the part of both of them. (Pause) I think Bill will be a revelation to people.
INTERVIEWER
How so?
MR. ALBEE
Well, because ya know, everybody knows him just as a clown. Most have never seen him perform Beckett, as I have. Good actor.
 |
INTERVIEWER
Great actor. He’s able to hit everything naturally and realistically in a way, but perfectly in time.
MR. ALBEE
Yeah, it’s a matter of timing. (Nodding)
INTERVIEWER
(Long awkward silence) I like to say, God is timing.
MR. ALBEE
Who? (Pause) The only god that can be worshipped is that which cannot be conceived of, or imagined. Tiny Alice takes care of all those things.
INTERVIEWER
(Pause) How do you think we got here? Don’t we know enough by now? Don’t we know that war is insane, is a money making machine fueled on the lives of innocent people?
MR. ALBEE
Well, don’t forget that last refuge of scoundrels—patriotism. (Pause) The more we learn, the better we get at self-deception.
INTERVIEWER
(Long pause) It’s healthy. Denial, yes? It’s…self deception, it’s distance, it’s…What is it?
MR. ALBEE
It’s something we invent so that we don’t have to think about things. (Pause) That’s the whole point of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. In The Iceman Cometh, O’Neill says you have to have false illusions in order to survive. Right? Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? says it’s ok to have false illusions as long as you know they’re false. The problem comes when you start believing them.
INTERVIEWER
Do you think that, at the end of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Martha admits the fear of the truth?
MR. ALBEE
Yes. When he says to her, “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, she says, “ I am George.” She’s afraid of living life without the false illusions.
INTERVIEWER
(Pause) And you leave it there.
MR. ALBEE
Of course.
INTERVIEWER
Blackout.
MR. ALBEE
That’s the way it should be left.
INTERVIEWER
Absolutely.
MR. ALBEE
Mm hmm. (Correcting the INTERVIEWER) Slow fade.
INTERVIEWER
Thank you. I wonder, uh, do you think about…
MR. ALBEE
(More accurately) Medium fade.
INTERVIEWER
(Chuckle) Do you ever think about your characters’ lives after the play?
MR. ALBEE
No. But it was very interesting when I wrote Home Life.
INTERVIEWER
Oh, that’s your new play? A first act to The Zoo Story?
MR. ALBEE
I had to think about my character’s life before The Zoo Story. It’s not just thinking about it after the fact. I decided I wanted to know what was going on for Peter at home before he went to the park. So I started writing it and I realized that after 45 years or so I still knew who Peter was and I still knew who his wife was.
INTERVIEWER
Right and the two kids…
MR. ALBEE
The whole thing. I still knew who they were.
INTERVIEWER
It’s a two-person? With the wife.
MR. ALBEE
Mmm, Anne
INTERVIEWER
(Chuckles) Anne? Where did that come from?
MR. ALBEE
That’s her name. (Laughs)
INTERVIEWER
It’s another shocking turn for Mr. Albee to…to write a previous act. It’s terrific really.
MR. ALBEE
I couldn’t have done it if it wasn’t there. And I couldn’t have written Peter in The Zoo Story unless I’d known what his home life was like. I just hadn’t had the need to focus on it. But it was still there.
INTERVIEWER
What was the need now to focus there?
MR. ALBEE
I thought it would be interesting to do. (Pause) Most of all I was getting tired of having to approve of other plays that people wanted to do with The Zoo Story. And so if I have this, I could do the two of them together. It’s all one play. Home Life and The Zoo Story have become Peter and Jerry. That’s the title.
INTERVIEWER
So no more American Dream and Zoo Story.
MR. ALBEE
No. Or other people’s plays.
INTERVIEWER
It can now finally live as a full length.
MR. ALBEE (Quick)
As a what?
INTERVIEWER
(Laughs) Sorry (Getting it right) as a longer night of theatre.
MR. ALBEE
That’s right.
INTERVIEWER
In The Zoo Story, is Peter, um…is he a dupe for you?
MR. ALBEE
A what?
INTERVIEWER
(Clearer) A dupe. (Seriously) Do you set him up to tear him down?
MR. ALBEE
Don’t be insulting. (Smiles)
INTERVIEWER
Really? (Laughing)
MR. ALBEE
Yes of course. He’s a real person. He’s having his life and he makes the mistake of talking to Jerry. Of course he learns a great deal by talking to Jerry. He’s probably going to be a quite different person by the end of The Zoo Story. And that will affect his future and his life with his wife and everything. Yeah. A dupe?
INTERVIEWER
It seems to me that you, your plays, you set up worlds and you tear them down.
MR. ALBEE
No (Pointedly) the characters tear them down.
INTERVIEWER
(Long pause) The act of going to the theater, back when… (Thinking) Probably before your time…
MR. ALBEE
I didn’t go to the theater before my time.
INTERVIEWER
But people did, and they threw vegetables and they yelled back at the stage and they were involved in it as a sporting event, the way they could jeer it…by the time you come along…
MR. ALBEE
Spontaneity out the window.
INTERVIEWER
(Searching) Beckett came more from Vaudeville, which I feel informs his work…it’s really happening in the space. (Pause) You and Beckett manifest a theatre all your own. There are no other laws.
MR. ALBEE
Well, there shouldn’t be. I tell my playwrighting students, every time you write a play, you have to write the first play that’s ever been written. How else can you be individual? I think that’s what a play should be about too. That’s the difference between a good play and a bad play. The inevitable verses the arbitrary.
INTERVIEWER
What do you mean?
MR. ALBEE
No matter how surprising a play is, it should always be inevitable.
INTERVIEWER
I can see that. All your plays are inevitable, from the curtain coming up, you don’t know it, but by the end…
MR. ALBEE
Yeah well, a play is a set of parentheses around events.
INTERVIEWER
There is something about an emotional detachment in your writing that makes a great play.
MR. ALBEE
Well, you shouldn’t get in the way of your work.
INTERVIEWER
But sometimes playwrights will. Their emotional involvement will come spewing out on the stage.
MR. ALBEE
And then it’s no longer the characters, it’s the playwright. (Pause) That’s why I don’t write about me. I write through me, not about me. I can’t imagine what I can’t imagine, so I’m limited by the limits of my imagination. But I don’t write about me.
INTERVIEWER
Are you overwhelmed at all, sometimes? About this thing that happens when a character appears and it’s such perfection.
MR. ALBEE (Overlapping)
It’s very stimulating to know that your mind is working interestingly.
INTERVIEWER
(Shift) A lot of your plays take place outside. In your experience of life is it important to go out, to travel?
MR. ALBEE
Well, contrast is important.
INTERVIEWER
In your plays you never have light without the dark. They’re always quite balanced. (Pause) There’s a constant delicate balance that you hold.
MR. ALBEE
Or else it would be All Over.
INTERVIEWER
There was one real question that I haven’t asked yet. Do you think that plays could…change form in any way? Could they exist outside of lights up and blackout?
MR. ALBEE
Where would they exist? They exist already as literature. They can be read.
INTERVIEWER
Would breaking the form somehow…meaning that you write a play written around a theme and it could be rearranged, maybe it doesn’t go from A to Z? Maybe the audience…
MR. ALBEE (Overlapping)
Well, everything has to go from its beginning to its end.
INTERVIEWER
(Taking the hint, he gathers his things) If there is any good secret to playwrighting that could be…
MR. ALBEE
I think listening helps. (Pause) I find also that I learn more by listening then I do by talking.
INTERVIEWER
I like that about your plays, I like that you’ve said that you don’t necessarily have the cathartic experience while you watch a play.
MR. ALBEE
After.
INTERVIEWER
After, you prefer.
MR. ALBEE
Yeah. Catharsis after the fact.
INTERVIEWER
Why?
MR. ALBEE
Because otherwise you’re just wrapping things up too neatly with too many Christmas ribbons.
INTERVIEWER
Your plays are puzzles to be continually…you know, not solved…
MR. ALBEE
Any play you can get by seeing it once isn’t worth bothering with. (Long pause then standing up) We have to be done.
INTERVIEWER
(Gets up as well, puts on his coat) Thank you, Mr. Albee. It’s been a real pleasure. I’ll do my best.
MR. ALBEE
(Quietly) You’ve done good.
INTERVIEWER
Thanks so much.
(They share a clumsy hug then kiss each other on the cheek. The INTERVIEWER exits slowly. MR. ALBEE is left alone on stage. Silence; tableau. Medium fade to black.)
CURTAIN
Read the unabridged version of Interview or Who’s Afraid of Mr. Albee?>>>
Edward Albee’s playwrighting career spans almost fifty years. His plays include The Zoo Story, A Delicate Balance, Tiny Alice, Seascape, Three Tall Women and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? A revival production of his play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is currently running on Broadway at the Longacre Theater, 220 West 48th Street.
For almost forty years Mr. Albee’s foundation maintains the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center (better known as “The Barn”) in Montauk, on Long Island, New York, as a residence for writers, painters, sculptors and composers.
Eric Wallach is a theater director and playwright who lives in the East Village. Send questions or comments: ebwally@yahoo.com
All quotes are fully approved by Mr. Albee. All photos take by Eric Wallach.
About the Author
Eric Wallach is a theater director and playwright who lives in the East Village. Send questions or comments: ebwally@yahoo.com
