The zoo story

Edward Albee is a world wide known American playwright who was born in March 12th 1928 in Washington, and was immediately given up for adoption. He was raised in very good circumstances, in a luxurious mansion, as his dad was part owner of the Keith-Albee vaudeville circuit. Both of his parents travelled quite often; interrupting his education. He was sent to several boarding schools before studying at the Trinity College in Hartford between 1946 and 1947. His first job was in a radio station where he wrote dialogues. Albee wrote novels and poems for a while and before deciding to become a playwright. In 1958, when he was 30, he quit his job with the Western Union and wrote The Zoo Story in three weeks. He was rejected by several New York producers but he had the premiere of the play on September 28th 1959 in Berlin in the Schiller Theater Werkstatt. Four months later it was paired with Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape at the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village. Its reception was favorable and won Albee the recognition as a formidable talent. In 1960 the play ended up getting him the Vernon Rice Memorial Award. His most prominent work was a three-act debut, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, completed in 1962. This play had a cinema adaptation in 1966, His strong dialogue technique, his approach to the subjects he worked on and especially the importance he attached to the human values, attracted attention in European countries. He died in September 16th 2016 in Montauk, New York because of diabetes. Albee has taught at various schools in the United States. He has won three Pulitzer Prizes for the plays: Seascape (1975) A Delicate Balance (1966) and Three Tall Women (1991). His early plays are still considered among the important examples of theatre of the absurd.

Those who have encountered absurd theater will feel quite satisfied when they see Edward Albee's The Zoo Story. Even though it may seem like a completely out-of-the-way event, The Zoo Story has a feature that gives the real message between movements. It deals with the effects of abstraction, loneliness, non-communication, social status and civilization on human. We see only two characters throughout the whole play, although we do not know anything about the life or history of these characters, we can judge them based on their appearance. One of them is a well-dressed type, so we can assume that he is a banker or a lawyer. The other doesn’t seem like he has a regular job, the Well-dressed character, Peter, has a regular life. He has a wife and two children. He does not need any life or activity other than his own. However, the second character, Jerry, is extremely weak in human relationships. He randomly appears on the scene and even though he doesn't know Peter, he starts telling him about his story about going to the zoo. The story is fluid, but it turns into a harassment from Jerry. When Peter finally comes down to Jerry's level, Jerry is the first one to have been like him. As Peter tries to throw Jerry out of the bench, Peter finds a tiger inside himself who has the need to protect the area he lives in. Finally, he kills Jerry with the knife jerry himself gave to Peter, and before he dies, Jerry states that he had planned all of this. The play comes to an end but the audience remains in its effect, and the strange creature that lives inside a human body libarates itself.

We can even consider Jerry as a symbol of Jesus.

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