CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Why the Edward Albee estate is resisting a black Virginia Woolf.

www.slate.com: You have to give Edward Albee credit: 55 years after its Broadway debut, and less than a year after its author’s death, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has once again become the most controversial play of the season, thanks to a production nobody will ever see. The 35-seat Shoebox Theater in Portland, Oregon, doesn’t feel like the natural epicenter of a flare-up involving artists’ rights, race, and intellectual property. But earlier this month, when the Albee estate denied producer Michael Streeter the rights to Woolf over his decision to cast a black actor, Streeter, “furious and dumbfounded,” took to Facebook, arguing that “the Edward Albee estate needs to join the 21st century.”

No comments: