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Beckett's Plays Still Speak to Edward Albee

Edward Albee spoke about his favorite scenes in a visit to NPR.
Edward Albee spoke about his favorite scenes in a visit to NPR.

Playwright Edward Albee, author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, acknowledges a major influence in his work: Samuel Beckett. In fact, the Irish playwright known for terse, often absurd, dramas created two scenes that make Albee a bit jealous: one in Happy Days and another in Krapp's Last Tape.

A night of the pair's short dramas, called simply Beckett/Albee, opened Off-Broadway in 2003, some 40 years after short works by Albee and Beckett were performed on the same stage in Berlin.

NPR's Susan Stamberg spoke with Albee about both his own work and Beckett's plays. To illustrate his appreciation for Krapp's Last Tape, the story of a man who repeatedly plays a tape of his own life, Albee read a favorite scene.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Nationally renowned broadcast journalist Susan Stamberg is a special correspondent for NPR.