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Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays 1960 to 2005
 
 
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Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays 1960 to 2005 [Hardcover]

Edward Albee (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)


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Book Description

0786716215 978-0786716210 November 8, 2005
America's most important living playwright, Edward Albee, has been rocking our country's moral, political and artistic complacency for more than 50 years. Beginning with his debut play, The Zoo Story (1958), and on to his barrier breaking works of the 1960s, most notably The American Dream (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Delicate Balance (1966), Albee's unsparing indictment of the American way of life earned him early distinction as the dramatist of his generation. His acclaim was enhanced further in the decades that followed with prize-winning dramas such as Seascape (1974) and Three Tall Women (1991), as well as recent works like The Play About the Baby (2001) and The Goat. (2002).

Albee has brought the same critical force to his non-theatrical prose. Stretching My Mind collects for the first time ever the author's writings on theater, literature, and the political and cultural battlegrounds that have defined his career. Many of the selections were drawn from Albee's private papers, and almost all previously published material—dating from 1960 to the present—has never been reprinted. Topics include Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Sam Shepherd, as well as autobiographical writings about Albee's life, work, and worldview.

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About the Author

Edward Albee has written and directed some of the most celebrated plays in contemporary American theatre. His most famous play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. A new production of the play starring Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin opens on Broadway in March 2005. Albee’s non-theatrical prose has published in The New York Times, Art in America, Playbill, Cosmopolitan, Nest, The Saturday Review, among others, as well as in numerous art catalogs. He lives in New York City.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 340 pages
  • Publisher: Carroll & Graf (November 8, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0786716215
  • ISBN-13: 978-0786716210
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,741,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The enlightened generosity of Edward Albee, May 8, 2006
This review is from: Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays 1960 to 2005 (Hardcover)
As a member of the theatre community for some 25 years, I bring a rather unique perspective to Stretching My Mind. With some assurance, I can say that no 20th century playwright has offered such sound advice on playwriting and its production. This is a selection of Albee's essays through the years which reflect works he is then seeing to the stage or has recently seen to the stage. Woven with extreme discretion and insight into the play-oriented texts is a sound vision of the nugatory forces alive in the US entertainment world (tv, film, theatre). He decries these, while offering up a philosophy which those interested in saving, nurturing and creating a true cultural base for this nation should listen to carefully. He believes that a democracy can only flourish in a healthy way when the electorate has as aeshetic background on which to base its choices. In a nation that has elected GWB twice, we can see the emotional and intellectual simplification of the nation's narrowing mind. Albee believes that a nation attuned to an aesthetic theatre as opposed to a pop cultural, pc theatre can not only develop a large audience base, but lead to a nation not shackled by the amygdala mindset of the digital world. Stasis can only lead to the death of art and culture, the only sure indices of a nation's spiritual, moral and ethical values. Those essays in this volume not devoted to playwriting deal with the contemporary art world. Albee is an 'accumulator' of artworks from about the globe. This is path on which I cannot follow him as I do not agree that conceptual art is art at all. But his point that a dynamic inter-relationship among sculptors, painters, composers and playwrights is a sound one. He has put his money where his mouth is with his Montauk foundation, offering new talent from these disciplines an environment in which to enjoy mingling and sharing views whilst enjoying a working holiday. If you are a fledgling writer or a theatre lover, you must have this book in your collection. Accumulate it. Read it, from first to last page.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
WITH THE EXCEPTION of a three-act sex farce I composed when I was twelve-the action of which occurred aboard an ocean liner, the characters of which were, for the most part, English gentry, and the title of which was, for some reason that escapes me now, Aliqueen-with the exception of that, The Zoo Story (1958), The Death of Bessie Smith, and The Sandbox (both 1959), are my first three plays. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
informed taste, serious theater
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, New York, The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Theater of the Absurd, The Goat, Soviet Union, Jonathan Thomas, South Africa, The American Dream, Tiny Alice, Louise Nevelson, Noël Coward, Spencer Fifield, Three Tall Women, Delicate Balance, Lee Krasner, The Sandbox, Jack Richardson, Miss Ross, Tennessee Williams, John Duff, Lillian Ross, Edward Albee, Milton Avery
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