NYC Offers 'Albee Season' Abraham Set for One-Acts

Four major productions of work by playwright Edward Albee - who celebrates his 80th birthday on March 12, 2008 - will be presented in and around New York during the 2007-08 season. Collectively entitled, The Albee Season, the plays - from Peter and Jerry at Second Stage Theatre to Me, Myself and I at McCarter Theatre, to The Sandbox and The American Dream at Cherry Lane Theatre and Occupant at Signature Theatre - span 50 years of Albee's singular career, from his first play The Zoo Story written in 1958 (now part of Peter and Jerry) to his newest plays Me, Myself and I and Occupant, premiering in 2008.

"This season-long array of plays - premieres, early works and a double-bill comprised of both the old and new - serves as a reminder why Mr. Albee is widely-regarded as America's foremost living playwright, most notably on the occasion of this milestone birthday," state press notes.

Below is a list of Albee productions being mounted in the New York region during the coming year:

--Edward Albee's Peter and Jerry, directed by Pam MacKinnon. October 19- December 9, 2007 at Second Stage Theatre (307 W. 43 St.) "With a cast featuring JohAnna Day, Bill Pullman and Dallas Roberts. In Peter and Jerry, Mr. Albee delves deeper into his 1958 play The Zoo Story by adding a first-act, "Homelife," leading to Peter's fateful meeting with Jerry on a park bench in Central Park," state press notes.

--Me, Myself and I, directed by Emily Mann. January 11, to February 17, 2008 at McCarter Theatre (91 University Place) in Princeton, NJ. "A world-premiere comedy about identical twin brothers and their mother, who can't tell them apart, even in their adulthood."

--The American Dream and The Sandbox, March 4 to April 12, 2008 at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St.). "F. Murray Abraham will head the cast of these seminal Albee plays, being produced at the same theatre in which they debuted in 1961 and 1962."

--Edward Albee's Occupant, May 6 to June 29, 2008 at Signature Theatre Company (555 W. 42 St.) Occupant is "a portrait of acclaimed sculptor Louise Nevelson and a quest to capture a charismatic and complex artist and persona. What is the relationship between creator and creation? Who was Louise Nevelson? Only she knows."

Edward Albee's plays include the Tony Award-winning Best Plays Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia, the Pulitzer Prize-winning plays A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women. Other Albee plays presented in New York in recent seasons include The Play About the Baby, Counting the Ways, Tiny Alice, Marriage Play and All Over. In 2005,  Albee received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, and previously received the Gold Medal in Drama from American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, as well as the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts.

Photo of Edward Albee by Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.

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