Edward Albee
With regard to the theater, I had grown up on the traditional portfolio of Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, and Jerome Kern musicals. My tastes didn't go much beyond Camelot and later Caberet. In my journey to become better educated, I began reading or going to plays by, Eugene On'Neill, Samel Beckett and Bertolt Brecht and somewhere along that path I discovered Edward Albee.
I can't say I was a fan of all of his work, but Tiny Alice soon became my favorite play with it's ever present, on-stage doll house and fantastical plot. Meaning seemed everywhere, and no where, but the enigma of his plays communicated feelings about life that seemed central to the lives of most people of the 60s. By the early '70s I was attempting to write plays in Albee's style, as I continued to try to better understand what I was seeing or reading in his work...and in drama in general.
Edward Albee became most famous for Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, a play about George and Martha, and their ultimate marriage breakdown. It received the Tony Award in 1963 for Best Play, and was made into an award winning film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. In many ways the play seemed symbolic of the couples' own marriage turmoil.