Study Guide for Court Theatre's Production of Edward Albee's
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Contents:

• Edward Albee Biography
• Chronology of Edward Albee's Works
• American Social Atmosphere of 1962
• Introduction to Characters and Themes
• University Life: New Carthage
• Pre-show Questions
• Post-show Discussion Topics / Questions
• Selected Critical Responses from Original Production

(Edited by Ben Calvert
HTML by Michael Barker
© 2004 Court Theatre)

Edward Albee Biography:

Edward Albee, 1965

Edward Albee (born March 12, 1928) was born in Washington, D.C. and was abandoned by his natural parents. Two weeks later he was adopted by Reed A. and Frances Cotta Albee, in Larchmont, NY. He is named after his adoptive grandfather, Edward Franklin Albee, a part owner of over two hundred vaudeville theaters across the country. The young Albee attends several elementary schools, all which lead to a similar end - dismissal. After being dismissed from Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut, Albee moves to Greenwich Village in New York City. There, he wrote his first play, The Zoo Story, in 1958 to great acclaim.

In later years, Albee has said of higher education, "Everybody goes to college much too young, by the way. I am convinced that one should not go to college until one is thirty years old. Go out there for ten or twelve years, find out something about the world."

Edward Albee's plays are decidedly unique; one of his main influences has been Samuel Beckett and he is credited with being one of the first American playwrights of the school of thought known as Absurdism. His style is not as surreal as many Absurdists, but Albee's plays reflect the philosophy that life is inherently absurd, and Realism in theatre is like a drug to audiences and was only good for allowing them to succumb to illusion by placing it in a falsely realistic context of theatrical production.

(from Wikipedia.org and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Necessary Fictions, Terrifying Realities by Matthew C. Roudané)

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Chronology of Edward Albee's Works:

• The Zoo Story (1959)
• The Death of Bessie Smith (1960)
• The Sandbox (l960)
• Fam and Yam (1960)
• The American Dream (1961)
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962, Tony Award)
• The Ballad of Sad Café (1963)
• Tiny Alice (1964)
• Malcolm (1966)
• A Delicate Balance (1966, Pulitzer Prize)
• Everything in the Garden (1967)
• Box and Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1968)
• All Over (1971)
• Seascape (1975, Pulitzer Prize)
• Listening (1976)
• Counting the Ways (l976)
• The Lady From Dubuque (1980)
• Lolita (1981)
• The Man Who Had Three Arms (1982)
• Finding the Sun (1982-83)
• Marriage Play (1987)
• Three Tall Women (1991, Pulitzer Prize)
• The Lorca Play (1992)
• Fragments (1993)
• The Play About the Baby (1998)
• The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (2000, Tony Award)

Edward Albee, 2002

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American Social Atmosphere of 1962:

The original production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opened on October 12, 1962. The major pressure that audiences were under in the time of the play's original production was the Cold War. John F. Kennedy had just become the President of the United States in 1961. He replaced Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had been a popular "non-politician" when he ran for President and won in 1952. The decade leading up to 1962 when Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? premiered was the height of a period when Americans in general stood behind the belief in the American Dream that hard work, courage, and determination would lead a nation to prosperity. By 1962 domestic upheaval was beginning to take shape, and disillusionment in the American Dream began shaping many Americans' thoughts. (The American Dream is also the title of one of Edward Albee's earliest plays.)

Former President, Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Cold War

The Cold War was characterized by mutual distrust, suspicion, and misunderstandings by both the United States and the Soviet Union, and their allies. At times, these conditions increased the likelihood of a third world war. The United States accused the Soviet Union of seeking to expand their version of communism throughout the world. The Soviets, meanwhile, charged the United States with practicing imperialism and attempting to stop revolutionary activity in other countries.

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a clash between the Soviet Union and the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The crisis began on October 15, 1962 and lasted for thirteen days. Many regarded it as the moment when the Cold War was closest to becoming a real war.

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Uta Hagen, as Martha in the original stage production

Characters

• Martha - The fifty-two-year-old wife of a college history professor. Martha defines herself through her "Daddy," the president of the college in the fictitious New England town of New Carthage. In her past, after her mother died when Martha was a child, she attended a convent school and young ladies' junior college.
• George - Forty-six years old and an acknowledged failure. George is in the history department, though much to Martha's chagrin, he is not the head of the history department.
• Nick - Nick is thirty years old and blond, a young genius who received his Master's degree at twenty. He grew up in the Midwest with his wife Honey, whom he knew since childhood. An ambitious new member of the college's biology department.
• Honey - Nick's twenty-six-year-old wife. She's frail and "slim-hipped." Honey is rich, left money by her late evangelist father. She drowns her sorrows in brandy, getting silly and childlike. Honey is the most innocent of all the characters.

Themes

"...[Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is] an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen." Edward Albee

American Idealism
George and Martha - named after America's first First Family, George and Martha Washington who's public image and status overshadowed their own private relationship's turmoil.

Nikita Khrushchev

Nick - named after Cold War Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who's most noteworthy political actions were the initiation of the space program that launched Sputnik, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and as a key player in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Illusion

Edward Albee has said that the title of the play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" means "Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf"... or who's afraid of living life without illusions.

Virginia Woolf

Spirituality

Walpurgisnacht (Albee's Act Two title) - In Germany, Walpurgisnacht, the night from April 30 to May 1, is the night when witches hold a large celebration and await the arrival of the devil.
How might this apply to the play? What "evil spirits" might inhabit the second act of the play?

Exorcism - The third act title of the play, Albee had originally thought of calling the play The Exorcism.
What is exorcised in the play? Who does this affect the most?

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"... The university is conventionally regarded as the center of a particular kind of freedom, as the embodiment of liberal humanist values, and hence betrayal [at the university] is the more profound and disturbing."
C. W. E. Bigsby - Edward Albee: A Collection of Critical Essays

Academia - the struggle for tenure

A professor's quest for tenure at a college, like the one where the play takes place, can mean economic assurance later in life. Many factors contribute to a professor's award of tenure-ship, some of which are a political means of posturing to gain favor from the establishment's decision-makers. Many times a person's goal of tenure is furthered by their desire to obtain a higher position at the university - becoming the head of a particular department is a very sought after job, especially in 1962, when Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was written.

The struggle to advance in academia can be compared to the struggle to advance in any career, sometimes referred to as the career ladder, where reaching the top was the goal of many young people (mostly men in 1962). Most often times, a person's success in life is measured by where they are on their journey up a particular "career ladder".

• What are George and Nick's experiences with the career ladder?
• Do Martha and Honey help with George and Nick's advancement up the career ladder?

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A few questions to consider while you watch the play.

The Play :

• What are the character's relationships to each other before they are all together, and by the end of the play?
• How is the subject of children important in the play?
• Who is the most powerful character? Does this change throughout the play?
• What are the characters' occupations?

The Production :

• Is the play set in a specific time period?
• What do the production's design elements mean to your experience of the play?
• What kind of clothes are the characters wearing? Why might the designer have chosen those particular costumes?
• How do you react to the actor's performances? Are there any specific moments that interest you?

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Some relevant topics to discuss regarding the play and questions to consider.

Themes :

• Reality versus Illusion - What is real in the play? What are the illusions in the play? Do some characters favor illusion? How does alcohol contribute to Martha's desire for illusion?
• Truth and Lies - Which characters tell the truth in the play? Which characters lie, and what do they lie about? What happens when Nick finds out about George and Martha's lies?
• History (Culture) versus Biology (Science) - George is a professor of history, and Nick is an incoming professor of biology. Considering their occupational fields, are there any clashes between History and Biology? Are there cultural and scientific clashes in our modern times?
• Age - How do the characters feel about their ages? How does age affect the way they treat each other? Do they lie about their ages?
• The American Dream - is the concept widely held in the United States of America that through hard work, courage and determination one could achieve prosperity. These were the values of the original pioneers who crossed the American plains when Europeans first came to America. How do George's and Nick's journeys through academia mirror the struggle for the American Dream? What are their obstacles?
• Freedom - how does the setting of a small liberal arts college create a microcosm for the characters interaction with Freedom?
• Love and Hate - thinking about the characters' relationships with each other, what varying levels of love and hate do they display towards their significant others? Towards other characters?

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"[It is] a sick play about sick people. They are neurotic, cruel and nasty. They really belong in a sanitarium for the mentally ill rather than on a stage. This sordid and cynical dip into depravity is in three lengthy repetitious acts... We do not enjoy watching the wings being torn from human flies."
Robert Coleman - "The Play You'll Love to Loathe", New York Daily Mirror

"The 'message' of Mr. Albee's play couldn't be more terrible: life is nothing, and we must have the courage to face our emptiness without fear."
Diana Trilling - A Collection of Critical Essays

"Albee has spoken of his fascination and alarm at the apparent readiness of individuals and nations to embrace totalitarian political structures and modes of thought... [The play] stands as an assertion of the absolute need to accept responsibility for one's actions and to close the gap between individuals, to end private and public alienation."
C. W. E. Bigsby - A Collection of Critical Essays

"Albee's new play... is not only shocking and amusing, but it is also as emotionally shattering, in its own way, as Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night... Virginia Woolf is a splendidly acted, electrically staged (by Alan Schneider), brilliantly original work of art - an excoriating theatrical experience, surging with shocks of recognition and dramatic fire. It will be igniting Broadway for some time to come."
Mel Gussow - "Game of Truth", Newsweek

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