American playwright Edward Albee was BOTD in 1928. Born in Washington D.C., he was adopted by a wealthy family and grew up in New York. After being expelled from various private schools, he moved to New York to pursue a writing career. His first plays were produced in Berlin before being staged in New York, notably The Death of Bessie Smith, a drama about the racist neglect leading to the death of Black jazz singer Bessie Smith. He devastated Broadway with his 1962 play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a lacerating, cruelly funny drama about two unhappily married couples on an all-night drinking binge. A critical and commercial juggernaut, it ushered in a new frankness in American theatre, presenting a savage portrait of marital infidelity, suppressed homosexuality and sado-masochistic power games. Albee won the Tony Award for Best Play but was denied the Pulitzer Prize due to its controversial subject matter, prompting two members of the prize jury to resign in protest. Critics have speculated that George and Martha, the combative and mysteriously childless married couple, were actually two gay men, an interpretation Albee repeatedly denied. The play was stunningly filmed by Mike Nichols in 1966, starring real-life couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. A critical and commercial success, it won five Oscars including Best Picture. Albee had further success on Broadway with A Delicate Balance, and a number of stage adaptations of American novels including Carson McCullers‘ The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Truman Capote‘s Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. After a two-decade fallow period, he made an impressive comeback in the 1990s with Three Tall Women and The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? Albee had a four-year relationship with fellow playwright Terrence McNally in the 1950s, and was with long-term partner Jonathan Thomas from 1971 until Thomas’ death in 2005. He died in 2016 aged 88.