Part 3: Our Hall of Fame

Edward Albee, one of the most revered playwrights of the 20th Century talked to The Advocate about being gay, and writing gay characters in 1989. "Some of the characters in my plays are gay... and that's fine because that's the way life is, but gay is not a subject. Societal pressure on gay people is a subject."

Albee, who has won a multitude of honors, including Pulitzer prizes and Tony awards, as well as the National Medal of the Arts, was the scribe behind the powerhouse play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? After a tumultuous childhood, Albee dropped out of Trinity College to live in Greenwich Village in New York City in the 1950s. After a succession of odd jobs, he completed his first dramatic work, the one-act play, The Zoo Story, which premiered in 1959. In 1962, he followed up with Virginia Woolf, which won a Tony award, but was the subject of debate from the Pulitzer committee. That year, the committee decided that no one would win the award. The Pulitzer committee later honored Albee with A Delicate Balance in 1967. After several years of success, Albee began teaching young, up-and-coming playwrights at the University of Houston in 1989, and is still writing into his eighties.
—Michelle Garcia