The Zoo Story, Edward Albee's first play, premiered on September 28, 1959, at the Schiller Theatre Werkstatt in West Berlin, Germany. While there, it received much praise from critics including Friedrich Luft who, as quoted in Critical Essays on Edward Albee, called it a "shudder-causing drama of superintelligent style." Riding high on the praise it received in-Germany, The Zoo Story finally made its way back to New York where it debuted off-Broadway at the Provmcetown Theatre on January 14,1960, What made this debut even more exciting for Albee was the fact that he was sharing the bill with Krapp's Last Tape, a one-act play written by Samuel Beckett, one of Albee's idols.

Most New York critics declared The Zoo Story to be a very exciting play and viewed it as the beginning of a revitalized New York theatre scene. Henry Hewes in the Saturday Review claimed: "[Edward Albee] has...