Dear Colleague,

This is an update on our activities at the Edward Albee Society, and a plea for your membership dues and/or donations for the year ending in 2015. The Albee Society is a 501C3 not-for-profit organization, and your donations are tax deductible. We are slowly paying our web-designer, Alex Poulus, for his incredible work on the website’s original design; but we would like to make sure he receives full payment by year end 2016. And with your help and generosity, we are going to create some new members-only content for 2016, including interviews with major theatre artists and their work with Edward Albee. At this point, only a small portion of our email recipients are actually paid members, and we could really use your help – a membership is only $30.00, but every membership counts.

In January, we’ll be sending Edward Albee Society members Lincoln Konkle’s interview with playwright/writer and producer of Showtime’s Shameless/fan of Edward Albee, Sheila Callaghan. This will be announced also on the EAS website and FB page, but for members who have paid their dues for 2015-2016, we will email them the entire interview with Sheila about how she was influenced by Albee, her favorite Albee play, etc., and also questions about being a playwright in 21st c. America, and what it’s like to write episodic television.

And we ask that not only our current members update their membership for 2016, but that you encourage your colleagues to join our organization, which has grown substantially since our founding in 2013. And let them know they can now join ONLINE using PAYPAL at our website: http://edwardalbeesociety.org/membership/. It’s easy and fast, and if you go to our membership tab, you will find information on how to join either online or via mail. Membership for one year is $30; Lifetime Membership is $300, and again, any donations are gratefully accepted.

But, in addition to your membership and donation, we need your active involvement. In the Conference section of our e-newsletter, you’ll find a CFP from Natka Bianchini, and we encourage you to submit Albee-based papers and panels for this conference, but also for other conferences such as ASTR, ATHE, MATC, and other major conferences. We are also interested in hearing about any productions of Edward Albee’s plays. This January, I’ll be presenting as a visiting scholar at the New Stage Theatre in Jackson, Mississippi which will be producing a fiftieth anniversary production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? New Stage Theatre first produced Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on January 25, 1966 – an historic event for Jackson and as Jim Miles, a founding member of New Stage Theatre, said it was “a challenging time, charged with very strong feelings about the civil rights issues of the day. And those feelings, by some, naturally spilled over to considerable resistance to change of most any kind.” We will be providing some wonderful historical coverage of this groundbreaking original production, and the current production, and my talk at New Stage Theatre on our Facebook page in 2016.

Thank you again for your membership contribution–it will go a long way to helping us build our website, our book series, and conference coordination. And let me know how you’d like to be more involved in our organization – each year we’re growing and we have exciting news for this upcoming year.

E-Newsletter of the Edward Albee Society – Goings On in 2015!

If you have been working on an Edward Albee-based project – and that includes scholarly work, essays, reviews, courses, and productions of Mr. Albee’s plays – PLEASE let us know about it, and we’ll include it in our bi-annual newsletter and on our website! Below is what has been happening with EAS this past year:

The Edward Albee Society at Conferences:

2015 was a busy one for the Edward Albee Society. In March, David Crespy presented a paper and chaired a panel sponsored by EAS at the Mid-America Theatre Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. The same month, Natka Bianchini chaired an EAS panel at the Comparative Drama Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. She also represented the society during the conference’s plenary session on Visions of Tragedy in American Theatre. The remarks from that plenary will be published in next year’s volume of Text and Presentation, and are currently being expanded into an anthology to be published by Bloomsbury Press in 2017. Finally, David Crespy chaired a session sponsored by EAS at the American Literature Association in May in Boston, Massachusetts. We are looking forward to strong representation for 2016 conferences. West Coast Members, please see our call for ALA, which is being held in San Francisco next May, below!

And here is the call for ALA to send to the society members. We’d love to see you at the American Literature Association!

Edward Albee Society CALL FOR PAPERS

American Literature Association
May 26-29, 2016
San Francisco, California

The Edward Albee Society is seeking panelists to deliver papers on any aspect of Albee’s life and work at the forthcoming American Literature Association conference in San Francisco. Papers should be 15 minutes in length and presenters will have access to AV equipment during their session. If interested, please submit a 250-word abstract to Dr. Natka Bianchini, Albee Society Conference Planner and Vice President, at nbianchini@loyola.edu by Monday, January 25th, 2016. Please include name, affiliation, and contact information with your submission.

—- Help us expand our presence by proposing panels and working with our conference coordinator and Vice-President Natka Bianchini (nbianchini@loyola.edu).

The Edward Albee Society on the Internet:

The Edward Albee Society Website features a bibliography of scholarly books about Albee and a chronological list of his works with links to summaries and analyses of his most prominent plays. We continue to add resources for scholars, teachers, theatre artists, and fans to the Edward Albee Society website (e.g., mini-articles on Albee’s plays). The website now allows you to pay membership dues or to make a donation to the EAS using PayPal. The EAS Facebook page has nearly 300 likes, and we continue to post information about upcoming or recent productions and Albee panels at academic conferences.

EAS website editor and board member Lincoln Konkle will be teaching an upper-level undergraduate seminar on Albee and Gender & Sexuality during the spring 2016 semester.

Look for our new “members only” content to start up in 2016 – and we need more members to help alert us to Albee productions, conference panels, and other events of interest for our Facebook and web pages. Contact Lincoln Konkle (konkleli@tcnj.edu) for more information about how you can get involved!

The Edward Albee Review (now New Perspectives in Edward Albee Studies)

The first volume (edited by Michael Y. Bennett), Edward Albee and Absurdism, in the new book series, New Perspectives in Edward Albee Studies—the official publication of the Edward Albee Society, and published by Brill—is coming together in its final form and will be published by the end of 2016.

The second volume (edited by John M. Clum and Cormac O’Brien), Edward Albee and Gender/Sexuality, is currently accepting articles on the topic, but is in particular need of two lengthy review-essays, each one 15-20,000 words:

1) a review-essay that synthesizes, characterizes, and complicates the history of Albee criticism related to the topic of gender/sexuality, and

2) a review-essay that synthesizes, characterizes, and complicates the history of performance reviews of Albee’s plays as they relate to the topic of gender/sexuality).

The review-essays are particularly good essays for advanced graduate students and/or recent PhDs on the job market. If you would like to write one of the review-essays or know of an advanced grad student or recent PhD/MFA graduate that would be well suited and qualified to write one of these review-essays, please direct your inquiries and/or questions to John M. Clum (jclum1941@gmail.com), Cormac O’Brien (cormac.obrien@ucd.ie), and/or the Series Editor, Michael Y. Bennett (bennettm@uww.edu). Also, feel free to inquire about or submit articles to any/all of the above editors at the email addresses provided above.

Editor of New Perspectives in Edward Albee Studies:
Michael Y. Bennett (University of Wisconsin-Whitewater)

Advisory Board:
Linda Ben-Zvi (Tel Aviv University)
Natka Bianchini (Loyola University Maryland)
Stephen Bottoms (University of Manchester)
John M. Clum (Duke University)
David A. Crespy (University of Missouri)
Norma Jenckes (University of Cincinnati)
Philip Kolin (University of Southern Mississippi)
Lincoln Konkle (The College of New Jersey)
Brenda Murphy (University of Connecticut)
Matthew Roudané (Georgia State University)

Upcoming Volumes:
Volume #1 ­ “Albee and Absurdism” (2016)
Volume #2 ­ “Edward Albee and Sexuality/Gender” (2017)
Volume #3 ­ “Edward Albee as a Theatrical and Dramatic Innovator” (2018)
Volume #4 ­ “Edward Albee’s Influence on American Drama”
Volume #5 ­ “Edward Albee’s Own Influences”

The purposes of the Albee Society are the exploration of Albee’s life and works by means of historical and critical writing, artistic performances on stage, film, television, radio and recordings, by the amassing of historical documentation, and by publications and conference presentations devoted to Albee and his plays. The subjects of study shall include not only Albee and his works, but all aspects of the American and World Theatre he has affected by his own work in theatre as a playwright, director and producer. Furthermore the Albee Society will support efforts that affirm the notion of drama as literature, and encourage projects that support new dramatic work by new playwrights, as an extension of Edward Albee’s own Playwrights Unit, which he founded in 1963 with his producing partners Richard Barr and Clinton Wilder. We are affiliated with New York City’s Cherry Lane Theatre under the artistic direction of Angelina Fiordellisi.

Please pass this email along to your colleagues and any family or friends who are fans of Albee so that we may build our membership! And if you know any major theatre artists or producers or other luminaries whom you think might assist us in funding, please let me know!

LIFETIME MEMBERS OF THE EDWARD ALBEE SOCIETY
Robyn Bird
David Crespy
Angelina Fiordellisi
Norma Jenckes
Peter Mayer
Hartley Wright

Our elected officers are:

President & Treasurer: David Crespy
Professor of Theatre
University of Missouri

Vice President: Natka Bianchini
Associate Professor of Theatre
Loyola University Maryland

Secretary: Ashley Gallagher
Teacher, Lawton C. Johnson Summit Middle School
and Theatre Studies M.A. Candidate, Montclair State University

Website Editor: Lincoln Konkle
Professor of English
The College of New Jersey

Editor of New Perspectives in Edward Albee Studies: Michael Y. Bennett
Associate Professor of English
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

International Secretary: Valentine Vasak
Ph.D. Candidate, Université Paris Sorbonne

Our Board of Directors consists of Brenda Murphy, Lincoln Konkle, Ashley Gallagher, Michael Bennett, and David Crespy.

Thank you for your ongoing support!

Dr. David A. Crespy
Professor of Playwriting, Acting, & Dramatic Literature
Artistic Director, Missouri Playwrights Workshop
Co-Director, MU Writing for Performance Program
President, Edward Albee Society