SOURCE: "Rejuvenating the American Stage" in American Drama since 1960: A Critical History, Twayne Publishers, 1996, pp. 23-48.

In this excerpt, Roudané investigates Albee 's "affirmative vision of human experience. "Although the "world of the Albee play is undeniably saturated with death, " he observes, "the internal action, the subtextual dimension of his plays, reveals the playwright's compassion for his fellow human beings and a deep-rooted concern for the social contract. "

No other playwright in the 1960s influenced American drama more than Edward Albee. The beneficiary of his American predecessors, O'Neill, Miller, and Williams especially, he also was receptive to European influences, particularly those of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Peter Handke, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter. Albee would ultimately prove able to move freely, if somewhat uncomfortably, between the alternative environs of the Off-Off-Broadway theatrical movement to Broadway. While gaining inspiration from his dramatic forebears here and abroad, Albee also looked...