SOURCE: "From the Margins: Edward Albee and the Avant-Garde," in American Drama, 1940-1960: A Critical History, Twayne Publishers, 1994, pp. 201-14.

In the excerpt below, Adler contends that Albee's early short plays "serve as a culmination or summing up of many of the central emphases of post-World War II American drama."

A compelling case can be made that the birthsites of modern American drama during the 1915-16 season were one of the nation's earliest "regional" theaters and an off-Broadway playhouse, when short works by Susan Glaspell, such as the protofeminist play "Trifles," and by Eugene O'Neill, such as the sea plays like "Bound East for Cardiff," were first produced at the Wharf Theater on Cape Cod and later at the Provincetown on Macdougal Street in New York. An equally compelling argument can be made that the birthsites of contemporary American drama during the 1959-60 season were again off-Broadway and...