My Albee Illusion
Based on a true story.
It was late, around midnight.
I was up, in sweatpants, nursing a Cycling Frog, grapefruit flavor.
Sure, I could be playwriting right now. I am working on something new, after all. Plus, all the men I live with were asleep. What better time to dive in?
But I couldn’t.
I was haunted by something that happened to me the other day. It had to do with Edward Albee.
I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, Edward Albee was there, in my living room.
“Hi,” I said to Albee.
“Ugggghh,” Albee responded with disgust.
“How’s death?” I asked.
“It sucks.” He said. “Why in hell am I here?”
“Well, something happened the other day,” I said. “And it has everything to do with you.”
“I guess you’re about to tell me about it?”
“Yep.”
I took a deep breath.
“But before I do,” I warned, “I have a bit of a preamble. Ready?”
“I guess.” Albee was already fed up.
“Ok,” I said. “If someone ever asks me what the best play ever written is, I could tell them instantly without even thinking about it: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by you.”
“Ah come on, don’t be a fool…”
“No no…It’s true.” I insist. “And I’m not just saying that because you’re sitting here in my living room. It’s just a fact for me. I think you were the last titan of American playwriting. You used language like Beethoven used notes, rhythm and dynamics and if we’re talking about Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? specifically, I would genuinely compare your deftness with human language to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 aka “Pathétique” Sonata. It crawls, then lurches, then sprints, then screams, then skips, then laughs, then smashes you over the head with a frying pan.”
“Anything to drink in this dump?”
“And structurally, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? welcomes you into a recognizable world of contemporary American realism, then shivs you with the ritualistic European Absurdism of “fun and games” and then kicks you in the head with an Expressionistic nihilism when you realize these are not good people with good intentions— these are real people whose deep hurt has made them murderous, capable of total annihilation.”
“Are about done here?”
“At the risk of flattery and verbosity,” I continued, “I have to tell you that for me, Virginia Woolf? transcends even being a play. It’s more like something that happens to me.”
“Is that unusual?” Asks Albee.
“Uh, yeah, it’s unusal. This kind of play isn’t in fashion anymore. Audiences prefer their theater-going experiences less play, more lecture. There aren’t really characters in plays any more, just Issue-Driven, Non-Profit Mouthpieces to Ensure Future Funding. These Issue-Driven Non-Profit Mouthpiece characters don’t allow things to happen to them live on stage anymore. That’s too dangerous. Instead, they talk about things that they are sure of to other Issue-Driven Non-Profit Mouthpiece characters, who are also sure of things they talk about.”
“For chrissakes,” said Albee.
“And by the end of the play, everyone gets to experience sureness for a few moments. And sureness feels good. But then the houselights rise and phones turn back on and the sureness goes away and Donald Trump comes back.”
“He makes me puke,” said Albee.
“Agree,” I agree. “Anyway, I listened to Uta Hagan and Arthur Hill—-the original Martha and George— perform Virginia Woolf? recorded in 1962. It’s an extraordinary performance captured, amazingly, right here on YouTube. And of course there’s the essential viewing of the actually-married-at-the-time Liz Taylor and Richard Burton as the doomed couple in Mike Nichols’ exquisite movie version from 1966.1”
“It was fine.” Albee reluctantly agrees.2
“But your play itself? How you evoked the violence of marriage? The twisted psychology of marrying someone solely so they can punish you for your past sins? The oxygen tank of illusion needed to survive day to day? The make-believe that keeps us from killing each other? What happens when it’s gone? The sub-reality of nighttime and drinking? Perfection.”
“…” Albee exhaled in fatigue and exasperation.
“And just when the audience can’t take it anymore,” I went on, “you give us those final 30 painfully short lines between George and Martha. They’re not even lines really, they’re the dying strains of two fatigued violins confessing finally that they are both nothing more than two scared little children in this scary world.”
“Which we all are. Period.” Albee said.
“Here look at this,” I handed Albee my phone. “Here are photos of your last 30 lines in the copy of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that I’ve had since the mid-90s:”
“I’m not really interested.” Said Albee.
“Anyway,” I went on, “I would quite literally give my eye-teeth to be able to write plays like you. And the most enviable thing is: your plays, especially Virginia Woolf? feel like they were written in a single fucking sitting with no goddamn rewrites. Tell me you didn’t write Virginia Woolf? in a single fucking sitting with no goddamn rewrites?”3
“Did you conjure me from the dead to blow smoke up my skirt?” Albee grows increasingly disgruntled, “what is it you wanna tell me?”
“Yes yes in a second, but it’s important I tell you this preliminary stuff first, ok?”
“…” Albee rolls his eyes, but settles in.
I go on:
“The second best thing you ever wrote, also one of the best plays ever written, is Three Tall Women, a towering existential feat of a play. Three women spanning life’s three major epochs— youth (character C), middle age (character B) and near-death (character A)— who turn out to be the same woman. They debate the reality of events in their life, with each having a different view and opinion depending on where in time they stand at the feet of life’s colossus. And it’s all complicated by the estrangement of a gay son—- the imaginary son, the unacknowledged boy—- an invisible character who appears in play after play after play of yours. Clearly your Ur-tale. They say the play is about your adoptive mother? Is that true?”
“If I could tell you what a play was about,” grumbled Albee, “I wouldn’t need to write the play.”4
“Right! I marvel at the bravery it to took write it— not as an act of forgiveness, which it isn’t, nor should it be—-but as viewing her life as a whole, like an object you can hold in your hand. As you detail in A’s magnificent final monologue, which I photographed here:”
“What in god’s name did you do to the script there?” Albee asks.
“Oh, I’ll explain,” I explain. “That’s from a page in the script I used when I was a senior at Connecticut College. Myself and two good actor friends, Harmony Tanguay and Jenny Dare Paulin, self-produced and directed ourselves in a studio production of Three Tall Women and I cast myself as “A.”
“Surely you jest.”
“I did! Anyway, when I was a young actor, I had this bizarre compulsion to draw squares around my lines while I was getting off-book. It looks crazier than it was. I think, like George with Martha, it was a form of self-imposed punishment for not having much of an acting technique. See?”
“Anyway, performing that play was one of the most transcendent experiences of my life, but it was insane for three 21-year-old girls to perform Three Tall Women— a play about viewing life from its very end. How could we have possibly understood it? I didn’t! But I loved it anyway! And that’s yet another layer of your brilliance, Albee— and comes into the real thing that happened that I’m getting to.”
“Oh saints be praised.” Albee said.
“Yes yes ok,” I went on. “So, here’s why I’m telling you all this and why I conjured you up from the dead.”
“I’m on tenterhooks,” said Albee sarcastically.
“The other day, I was hired as a guest playwright at a university to give feedback on new plays by the undergrad playwrights. One of the playwrights, Riley, presented the first draft of their new play, a two-hander.”
“So?” Albee said.
“I love two-handers—- they are my absolute favorite play to write. I love two-handers so much in fact, I’m currently workshopping two of them as we speak: Dora Maar, my play about the surrealist artist and the making of Guernica, and Look Out, my own Ur-tale, about two troubled teens grappling with the fallout of their mother’s suicide—- the making of which I’ve written about a lot on Theater Is Hard.”
“Commercial over?” Asked Albee.
“Yeah, sorry.” I said. “The most beautiful thing about a two-hander is that each character arrives onstage with their entire biography of emotional baggage— their pain, joy, memories, delusions, philosophies—- all of which have brought them to this precise moment with this precise person for this precise reason, which triggers this precise play.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Smirked Albee.
“Anyway, Riley’s two-hander was lopsided. I could see that right away. One character was detailed and had an inner-life, opinions and wants. But the other character was an “arrow” character— or a character whose only reason for existence is to point things out for the audience.”
“Exposition personified,” Albee chimed in.
“Right. So I explained all this to Riley. I told Riley that transforming an “arrow” character into a “real” character is actually easier than it sounds. You simply complicate him—- brush in some wants, needs and contradictory details and thinking. Sometimes this can even be done in a single line or two. Then I said to young Riley: ‘Have you ever read The Zoo Story by Edward Albee?’ Riley made a face and said, ‘Who?’ And I said, ‘Edward Albee? The Zoo Story? It’s kind of the American gold standard for two-handers and launched a thousand “two guys on a park bench” imitations. Also,’ I told Riley, ‘it was the beginning of Albee’s lifelong dramaturgical descent into the wreckage of illusion and delusion, the violence of language and how love and hate are always preferable to indifference. You should really read The Zoo Story and steal what you can because—-’
‘Edward Albee?’ Riley interrupted.
‘Yeah, Edward Albee,” I said, knowing exactly what was coming next.
‘Pfft, I’ll skip it,’ Riley said, dismissively. ‘He said Black people weren’t allowed in his plays.’”
There was a long stretch of silence in my living room.
Finally Albee said—
“I didn’t say Black people ‘weren’t allowed’ in my plays, I said I didn’t write plays about Black people so it’s unrealistic to cast them.”
Another stretch of silence and then Albee said—
“Listen: I was a gay playwright in New York in the fucking 1950s, ok? I’m not a racist, I just think as an artist I have a right to be an absolute fascist about what my work is.”
“In theory, I agree with you,” I said.
“It’s just,” Albee went on, “that casting, say, Martha with a Black actor would instantly raise a lot of questions, since it’s a totally naturalistic play. Is this a Black college? Do we have a Black president of a white college? Not very likely.”
I took another deep breath.
“What you are saying,” I said, “is wrong. But I didn’t conjure you from the dead to convince you out of your antiquated belief system. Believe me, I want to try, I really do. There are a million arguments against your and your estate’s stance on non-traditional casting but the biggest for me is one that you, of all people, should understand.”
“Go on,” Albee eyerolled.
“All of theater is a fucking illusion anyway!” I yelled. “A collective agreement that we all say “yes” to in order for it to work. So suddenly deciding that different races playing different roles destroys the “reality” of your play? Your play has to be “real” in order to work, does it? So the actors playing George and Martha should actually be drunk on gin during the show? And they should throw the fight choreography out and just take the punches and strangles? Or the actor playing Nick should actually fuck the actor playing Martha on stage? Or the actor playing George actually has to have shot his mother in the face in his personal life? Are we all not in a theater right now but actually in a dump of a house in New Carthage? It’s all illusion, Albee! Let people cast whoever the fuck they want and trust that most carbon-based audience members have the imagination to go with it! YOU KNOW THE RULES, ALBEE! FOR CHRIST’S SAKE YOU KNOW THE RULES!”5
I inhaled, and then slowly exhaled.
“But I won’t say that,” I said. “I’ve gone to enough Al-Anon meetings to know that you can’t control what another person says and does. What I can do, though, is show you what your stance against non-traditional casting hath wrought upon your legacy. That young undergrad playwright Riley will never experience your tremendous body of work because you believed in that stupid, small-minded casting shit. So now, young Riley ain’t interested.”
“Riley ain’t interested…” said Albee, slowly.
“Nope,” I said. “And I get it. The Youngs today don’t have any time for the bullshit of the Olds of yore. Just as I’m quite sure you yourself didn’t have time for bullshit when you were a Young.”
Albee was silent for a while.
“Mind if I smoke?” He finally asked.
“Go right ahead.”
He does.
“Anyway,” I said. “I want to believe you’d have eventually changed your mind about non-traditional casting, had you lived another ten years. Because you’re that good and I cannot let you go. I will not. But maybe that’s just another illusion I have to live with. Because…who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
“I am, Sara….” Albee said. “I…am. Theater… is…fucking… hard…”
“I know… I know…”
Hollywood mythology has it that the movie version of Virginia Woolf? so “violent” they invented movie ratings to protect us from it (G, PG, PG-13 & R).
He did eventually agree that it was fine.
I read it actually took three months of writing, a lifetime of unconscious absorption.
What Albee usually said when asked “what’s your play about?”
In case you’re wondering: Virginia Woolf? Act III: The Exorcism