City Theatre Austin to Present Edward Albee's WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

Continuing the 2022 season, City Theatre Austin has announced the full-production stage presentation of Edward Albee's award-winning play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Described as "an extraordinarily brilliant play," this riveting, revealing, biting, and almost shattering examination of marriage and family is one of the most successful plays in Modern American Theatre and all too rarely produced in Austin.

The production features Cal Kraines, Chiara McCarty, Meredith O'Brien, and Rick Smith, and direction by Karen Sneed.

Earning the Tony Award and New York Drama Critic's Circle Award for Best Play, Edward Albee has created a masterwork of modern theatre, shocking audiences since it premiered on Broadway in 1962. Set on the campus of an East coast college, this intense dark comedy shines a blinding light on one, truth-exposing - booze and bantered - night in the lives of two couples: Nick, a young biology teacher, and his rather plain wife, Honey; and the older George, a failed history professor, and his bawdy, invective wife, Martha. Virginia Woolf? is an evening fueled by alcohol, debauchery, and disdain, as taunts become jabs, and jabs become attacks, building the night to a hideous, cruel frenzy, and forcing everyone to face their most deep-seated illusions and self-deceptions.

Edward Albee burst onto the theatrical scene in the late 1950s with a variety of plays that detailed the agonies and disillusionment of the time. His early plays, The American Dream and The Zoo Story, effectively gave birth to American absurdist drama, a new theatrical movement, and he was labeled as the successor to Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. But, with the surreal nature of his work never far from the surface, Albee's plays, with their intensity, modern themes, and experiments in form, startled critics, and audiences alike while, changing the landscape of American drama. He is a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize with monumental works including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Delicate Balance, Seascape, Three Tall Women, and The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?. His plays form a body of work that is recognized as unique, uncompromising, controversial, and provocative. Albee describes his work as "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen." Much has been written, and will continue to be, about Edward Albee, who died in 2016 at the age of 88.

The production is led by guest director by Karen Sneed (City Theatre's Twelve Angry Men, Waiting for Godot, The Seafarer), and features the cast of Cal Kraines, Chiara McCarty, Meredith O'Brien, and Rick Smith. City Theatre is celebrating its 15th anniversary season of live theatre entertainment. CTC is an Austin-based, not-for-profit arts organization and is sponsored in part by the Austin Creative Alliance and the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin. Founded in 2006, the company has been recognized by the Austin Critics Table Awards, the B. Iden Payne Awards, the Central Texas Excellence in Theatre Awards, BroadwayWorld Austin, Central Texas Live Theatre, and has twice been voted "Best Theatre Company" by Austin American-Statesman's Austin 360. CTC is dedicated in providing a quality, reputable, and diverse public theatre and Stage Entertainment experience that is accessible to all artists and the entire Austin community. CTC continues to offer its student and group discount ticket program for any show. Put a little theatre in your life!

Learn more at www.citytheatreaustin.org.

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