Eight tall males

The playwright discusses Albee's Men

by Gary Susman

Many writers swear that their characters, once born, will take on lives of their own and invent their own dialogue and actions, without the writer's conscious influence. Asked whether his characters do the work for him, playwright Edward Albee answers, "I like to let them think they do. It's a trick we play on ourselves. They don't exist, and they can't say anything unless we write it for them. But it makes them happy to think they're independent."

Many of his male characters do run away from home in Albee's Men, which was compiled by actor Stephen Rowe and director Glyn O'Malley and consists of monologues from eight plays that span Albee's celebrated career. It's a one-man show, presented as part of the American Repertory Theatre's New Stages series, with Rowe (a founding member of the ART Company) performing the monologues in order of the characters' ages, from 15 to 60.

Of the origin of Albee's Men, Albee says, "About four or five years ago, a friend of mine in Fort Worth, a teacher named Andy Harrison, put together, with my approval, a thing called Albee's Women, with three actresses handling nine or 10 of my female characters. I thought it was quite nice. For some reason, nothing happened with that one. It had good reviews. I kept it as a pending file as something to do in New York with big-name people for a limited run. But then I got busy with other stuff and forgot about it. Whether I mentioned this to Steve or Glyn O'Malley, I don't know. Steve and I have been working together a very long time, going back close to 25 years."

If Albee's Women sounds like a more apt premise than Albee's Men (think of Martha from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, or Three Tall Women, which in 1994 won Albee his third Pulitzer Prize), he responds, "Well, I've written equally for both sexes, so it really shouldn't. Maybe I'm better known for my female characters, but maybe this will disprove that."

Why does the idea that Albee's women are his more interesting characters persist, then? "I don't know. Probably because actresses are always more visible than actors are. There's a kind of drama to them. And I do write pretty involving female characters, I guess. But look at Virginia Woolf -- is Martha any more interesting than George? Not ultimately, but she's certainly louder, more dramatic. I think we like actresses more than we like actors, as a rule. We find them more impressive."

Albee says his own input into Albee's Men was limited. "I saw it in San Diego about a year ago, in a one-act version. I thought it was nice, and I encouraged Steve and Glyn to go on with it. I said I thought it would be better as a two-act piece, and I may have suggested one or two monologues they hadn't thought about. But I left it up to Steve and Glyn to put it together."

The men they've chosen are a diverse lot, from The Zoo Story's park-bench pest Jerry to Virginia Woolf's world-weary George to Jack in A Marriage Play, who has a life-transforming out-of-body experience. Asked what links these characters, Albee says, "Not much. I wrote them, so their limitations are my limitations, and their extravagances are mine."

And though he allows that, "I've seen a lot of mediocre performances of my plays," Albee praises Rowe's understanding of his often complex, rigorous work. "From the very beginning, he seemed to relate to it. He seemed to understand my rhythms, my tempi, and what my characters were about. It's nice to have somebody who's intuitively sympathetic to what you do."

An enfant terrible turned éminence grise, Albee celebrated his 70th birthday last week. "It's a shocking age for somebody who goes around thinking he's 30 all the time." He's certainly not slowing down. "I have this play called A Play About the Baby, which I'm doing tiny revisions on. It's going up in London in September. And I have yet another play called The Goat, which I'm working on. I always have a couple of plays in my head."

Does he set aside time every day to write? "That depends on what you mean by writing. Whether I'm writing something down on the page every day? No. I spend a lot of time writing in my head, much more than I do writing things down on the page. I think like a writer every day."

Albee's Men runs March 24 through April 11 at the Hasty Pudding Theatre. Tickets are $25 and $35. Call 547-8300.