Edward Albee interview (2005)

I was an adopted kid and I was raised by this wealthy family who had been involved in theater management vaudeville management the Keith Alba vaudeville circuit and so the house would be filled with retired vaudeville performers all the time so I got to meet Billy Caxton victim war and Edwin and all those people that nobody's ever heard of and I started going to the theater when I was really young I think when I was six years old I went to see jumbo the old Hippodrome Theatre that musical was Jimmy Durante and an elephant that was my first experience in the theatre so I was raised on a live theatre which was about the only good thing about the adoption I never felt comfortable with the adoptive parents I don't think they knew how to be parents I probably didn't know how to be a son either and I was I stayed pretty much to myself out of fairly active in her life I certainly didn't relate to much of anything they related to they sent me away to school when I was nine ten years old so not to have me around so that was fine it was all right I took care of myself I liked school if only when I was doing the stuff that I wanted to do like I was always very very good at the classes that - interested me and I'm very bad at the ones that didn't I think I knew very very young or at least had some inkling of the direction that my life was going to take and so I was always interested in the arts I started painting and drawing when I was eight years old writing poetry when I was nine or ten and wanted to be a composer after I discovered bark when I was twelve and a half that didn't work out he was too good obviously the way my mind works or worked at the time those things interested me I have no idea how my natural parents were back in the days when I wasn't often do you weren't allowed to find that sort of thing out so I couldn't but I don't think that matters much anyway some of the brightest kids that I've known I've met their parents and I can't believe that there was any relationships between them I rent as much as I could I had the funny story it was the family had a big library and their huge house and Larchmont leather-bound books and I was looking for a book to read one night I was what 14 maybe 13 and who is this Ivan Turgenev true gain you have of course and so I took one of the books out of the library was virgin soil as a matter of fact and I read it the next morning I came down for breakfast family had to have breakfast together it was a formality and they were rather cool I thought I said what's the matter they said there is a book missing from the library I said yes it's by Ivan Turgenev not pronouncing his name correctly it's a wonderful book I took it upstairs it belongs in the library you have left a gap on the shelves that gives you some idea of the disparity between our points of view I never felt that I related to these people which may be interesting because most kids are trapped into feeling an obligation to their natural parents you know for what would be for being born I guess foolish notion but still and since I didn't relate to these people and I knew that I did wasn't from them I had a kind of objectivity about the whole relationship this is all second guessing of course but I suspect it probably was in my mind I'm I I'm a permanent transient that's probably that lion the zoo story came from I'm a primitive traction to my home is the sickening rooming houses on the Upper West Side of New York City which is a greater city in the world are men but that's where that long came from in the zoo story well I got thrown out of a lot of schools yeah because I didn't want to be there I didn't want to be home either I didn't want to be anywhere I was but I managed to get an education before I got thrown out and the stuff that interested me teachers seemed to sense that in some terribly unformed way there might be something going on in the mind there that they should be encouraged and so they would encourage me toward the things that interested me and that was nice so god I'd learned something when school gets thrown out go to another learn some more there were some teachers who were very very helpful as I say since that maybe I had a mind was cultivating and pointed me in the right direction to a lot of things I can't be specific about it I know that was going on these are all private schools not public schools in the bowels of the city these were private schools a lot of wealthy kids there but the teachers were paid fairly well and they were better educated than their students she's not necessarily true in the New York public school system after time and some bright people and they you know they had small class of seven or eight kids in the class and they could spend time finding out who the kids were you see so I'm very very grateful that even though I didn't get along with my adoptive parents they did offer me an extraordinarily good education I was not going to many of the courses I was supposed to and my freshman and sophomore year I was going to a lot of interesting courses to seniors for taking getting a good education on a graduating level and of course being marked absent and failing my required courses they didn't like that and they gave me a choice go to the courses I was supposed to or leave and so I left I was the one being educated I thought I should have some say as to the nature of my education foolish notion I tried first when I was 13 because I had one of my grandmother's who giving me little Christmas presents I've had a few hundred dollars and so I went into New York with my little suitcase and tried to get on an ocean liner went to the would have Canard or whatever that whatever live the line was and discovered that I didn't have enough money and also I didn't have any identification or anything and they weren't going to let me onboard the ship I guess I've controlled the Greenwich Village was where whatever intellectual ferment was going on in the in New York was going on and that and that's where all the interesting people were so I went there and they were there I complete completed or not completed continued my education by going to see all great abstract expressionist paintings and listening to all the contemporary music of the Columbia Macmillan Theatre going to see all the wonderful off off-broadway plays and the paperback book market was around so I you know when I couldn't but I couldn't steal a book I could buy a real chief was good and know a lot of saloons that we all went to all the writers all the painters of course would go to the cedar cedar bar anyone go there and watch them fall down you know sort of nice and then all the writers would be going to San Remo everybody would be there sitting around talking if you wanted to be with the uncles you go up to the Russian team not the Russian Tea Room there was a bar on the southwest corner of Carnegie Hall forget it was cold now all the composers would be there and we all knew each other everybody was friendly yeah it was the last time one of my grandmother's had given me a tiny inheritance which kept me in beer and sandwiches and sharing a tiny apartment with five or six of my very close friends and also I would take jobs from time to time the only one I liked was delivering telegrams for Western Union that was a good job I did that you know you showed up when you wanted to see me through a really clever you're ignorant it's pretty easily I think I knew I was going to be involved in the arts in some fashion when I was very young that's what one be a composer of dictating and drawing and writing I think that's uh it just seemed inevitable to me that's who I was therefore that's what I would do I know that I liberated a large typewriter from the Western Union company and dragged it down to the apartment of sharing all my friends and just started writing this play took me two weeks it's called a zoo story and I'd been writing a lot of stuff from - and I've met a couple of half-assed attempts and plays which I never finished and all of a sudden I wrote the zoo story and I had a very odd sensation this isn't bad this may even be individual it's the first thing I ever wrote that I could say you wrote this all the influences have been put put aside put under you've learned enough this is your voice I was aware of that at the time that was a good feeling it's very hard to explain to anybody who is him to play right if it's a gift you're a playwright I that's why I was not a very good poet and a bad novelist in the bad short story writer and then I wrote a play and I figured out that's what I was supposed to be doing all my life and also I just think think that every writer everybody in any of the arts has a particular time when they can become individual it's different from the people you know some people they're doing it when they're 18 some don't get to it until they're 50 and the zoo story was that moment where I knew I'd written something good and individual and you just take off from there nice what happens I was obviously analyzing on two opposite people wouldn't compromise too much on the way to adulthood and the other was compromising nowhere at all and it was bound to be a clash but that's merely plot I don't know I really know I never know the only plate that I've known what began it was when I wrote a play about Bessie Smith great black blues singer who was allowed to die and outside of Memphis in 1937 because she was black and the hospitals were white even there she's not in the play her blood is but with the exception of that one I write my place to find out why I'm writing them what's going on in my head that is turning into a play and I become aware that it's turning into a play and so I write it down so simple and so easy and so true I'm not one of these didactic playwrights who says you know I must now write a play about this or that subject and find some characters it comes into focus very slowly for me and when it's sufficiently into focus I can hear the characters know them and put them in their action I imagine each writers life is very individual I mean some of us have great celebrity others of us keep fairly quiet nobody knows who we are which is nice some people have commercial success some people don't there is no such thing as the writers life there is merely that time when you're sitting upstairs who wherever you sit and you're writing something and that's very special and probably very individual for each person two ideas come into my head and I've got to get out of my head that's simple I'm a playwright therefore I write plays that's what I do that's what I am I think it's true with all creative people some people are composers some people don't get it right you know Henry James sold he should be a playwright he was wrong Arthur Miller thought he should be a novelist he was wrong you know writing should be useful if it can't instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness there's no point in doing it but we all right because we don't like what we see him we want people to be better and different sure that's why we do it there's a purpose to everything except the Republican Party perhaps except possibly to teach us fear and loathing well I don't get up every morning say now can I find some risks I have to take no but I don't think I've compromised either I don't think I've ever said to myself gee this is going to be an unpopular subject maybe I better not write it or gee maybe I better simplify here no no what do I do the reverse try to make things make myself look better by making it more complicated no you're right what's in your head I don't rewrite well not much I think I probably do all the rewriting that I'm going to do before I'm aware that I'm writing the play because obviously creativity resists in the unconscious resistant the unconscious run probably resists the unconscious to resides in the unconscious and my plays I think are pretty much determined before I become aware of them I think they formulated there and then then they they move into the conscious mind and then onto the page and by the time I'm willing to write a commit a play to paper I pretty much know or can trust the characters to write the play for me and so I don't impose I'd let them have their heads and say and do what they want and it turns out to be a play not a celebrity I don't think in those terms anyway I was delighted that people liked it that's fine no but they'd like to the zoo story American dream and death Bessie Smith sandbox also liked those two but this was different this was on Broadway therefore was meant to be a rival you know take ridiculous attitudes like that commercial theater you put up with that stuff you know I've written what 28 plays now I think the majority of them have had their world premieres and small theaters and of my 28 plays maybe no more than half have been on Broadway and I don't care I'd much prefer most Broadway theaters are too big I would much prefer a 400 seats theater to a 900 seats theater any time for my plays which are basically chamber plays and I find the audience as small as the theater the more alert the audiences are and the younger they are the more intelligent they are and so I'd be perfectly happy never to have another play on Broadway it's except maybe you have a responsibility to hit those people too I think you've got to assume that nobody promised you a rose garden and sometimes it's gonna be okay sometimes it's gonna be tough but if you haven't got sufficient sense of self to us or surmount either failure or success you know you're in trouble I know that some of my plays that have been least popular some of the best ones and they'll figure it out eventually you know I've never lacked self-confidence in my talent as a writer this is this sounds wrong it sounds terrible but it's true I've never had doubts about my ability as a writer you know now that I'm getting very old there's the possibility that my mind is going you know that wonderful story about Bernard Shaw that when he got into his nineties I hope it's true he was reading one of his earlier plays one day and he was having trouble understanding it and so he rewrote it and simplified it so he could understand and I had to take his work away from him because he was doing that but might have helped some not selling out not buying putting them down the way they want to be and not compromising in production or casting or anything of that sort yeah I've been pretty much able to be my own person which is nice maybe that was made fairly easy for me by the initial success of Virginia Woolf I don't know possibly but I've never been dude they're always pressures on you to sell out and do something different but I gotta kind of ordinariness to me this is the play that I wrote this is damn well the play I want done I made one one experiment I said alright everybody tells me that this is a collaborative art it's something I've never believed by the way it is a creative act and then there's there are people who do it for you um what's one play I said okay all these people think they're so bright I will do whatever they want but I was except for changing the text and I put up with a lot of stuff that I didn't like very much who didn't really approve oh it was a fiasco and if I'm gonna have a fiasco I want to be on my terms I like to take my own credit my own blame cuz I can make as many mistakes as the next person you know I think my mistakes are more interesting I'm not even sure I was thinking in those terms when I was starting out I'm not even sure that I think much about them now either but I think it's being able to do pretty well what you think is useful that's basically it because all art has got to be useful if it's merely Deckard ever Escapist it's a waste of time I mean you write whatever you write to try to make people behave the way you want them to beg make them make think the way you think they should be thinking and if they behave themselves good if they don't tough the achievement is holding onto to that goal I suppose all art is useful because it tells us more about consciousness and it should engage us into thinking and reevaluating re-examining our values to find out what the stuff we think we've been believing for twenty years still has any validity and if art arts got to help us understand that values change and if we've if we've stopped exploring the possibilities of our mind and then we're asleep and why not just stay asleep so all arts got to be utilitarian and useful it's one of the great things about African art it's not made as art it's utilitarians made for religious dance purposes and people who make it don't think of themselves geometry I'm a great sculptor no they're making something useful I think is true with novels plays poems and I think basically all serious creative people feel the same way so many words get me gets misused all the time I don't think much above my values I know what they are if anybody pins me down as to what my value my values are that I will do whatever I possibly can to save us from the forces of darkness that are trying to take over our democracy now that I believe we are a slowly peacefully evolving revolutionary society that's we were formed at by by the men by the button Bertrand class and that's why it should be a peacefully evolving Society try to keep us awake to the fact that democracy demands informed voting and that democracy is fragile and if we don't stay on top of things we'll get what we deserve as we seem to be doing right now and I do think that all art is fundamentally political you know in the large philosophical sense participate in your own life fully don't sink back into that which is easy and safe you're alive only once as far as we know and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived well I can't do it my own work because I can't look at my own work that way if I if I read a book go to a place he a painting or hear a piece of music that makes me expand the parameters of my response makes me think differently maybe makes me think perhaps even more completely about something that I've had a useful experience otherwise as I said it's really decorative and a waste of time let's see parachute jumping I sort of like to do that I could be guaranteed the damn thing but open and I wouldn't break both my legs when I landed let it be fun to do I guess uh no I would just like to keep on writing plays for a while so that I can get better and more useful I believe I'm getting right now this weekend a thing called the Lifetime Achievement Award from Broadway which strikes me as a little premature I've not even done my lifetime work yet but I suppose they have to give it to you too early if they're gonna give it to you before you're dead well the dangers to democracy on the pack on the part of an electorate that I think is voting far too selfishly and as most of our voting doesn't have anything to do what is with what is going to be most good for the most people it's it's selfish and uninformed voting I find that terribly dangerous I find that they can kill the democracy very very quickly I find that the inroads on civil liberties in our society are terribly dangerous there's never been any danger from the far left to the United States the death of democracy is fascism and I see us moving closer and closer to that compliance all the time and that worries me a lot but I'm not gonna write a a didactic political play because that's a rant and then there's no point in it if I can just try to persuade people stay awake live it fully don't sell out don't compromise you encourage people to do that then there's a hope trying to get into your own mind a little bit figure out what it is you wanted you want to do with your life but you really want to do who you really are don't waste your life doing something that you're going to end up being either bored with or or feel was futile or or a waste of time your life live it live it as fully and as usefully as you possibly can useful being the most important thing their life must be lived usefully not no not selfishly at a usefully lived life is probably going to be ultimately more satisfying

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

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Id: XEKgDWTitpA

Length: 29min 56sec (1796 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 12 2019