Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Réka Cristian: Edward Albee's Castings

telling, in dramatic action or in both. This supplementation, which is implied in the relational rhetoric of Albee's dramaturgy, denotes that there is no specific hierarchy among the dramatic participants. The examples below aim to follow the similitude among Albee's characters. The cast of Albee's dramas participates in the process of encoding and unveiling the dramatic blindspot in Albee's dramas, which is the figure of the present (or absent) child. This trope of the child is revealed in the emblematic dual constructions of the dramatic cast in Albee's dramas. Albee's characters contain, besides the dual component, a dispersed sense of the author in the characters' journey through the oeuvre. The name of Edward Albee imprints the plays with characters that remind the reader of the biographical implications of the plays. The playwright claims this personal implication as a catharctic process: "I get all the characters in all of my plays out of my system by writing about them"". Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Sandbox, Three Tall Women, The Zoo Story, A Delicate Balance, The American Dream, Marriage Play, Counting the Ways, Finding the Sun are some of Albee's plays centered around the issue of the love and hate that sublimate into dramatic filiation acts. In the following the discussion will be based on mostly on The Zoo Story, A Delicate Balance, The American Dream, Marriage Play, Counting the Ways, Finding the Sun, with references to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

? and The Play About the Baby, and some remarks about Three Tall Women and Sandbox

4

. Mel Gussow Edward Albee: A Singular Journey. A Biography (London: Oberon, 1999), 354. 4 There are two Albee plays that are the closest to his biography. One is The Sandbox, a "cameo tribute to his maternal grandmother, who was closest to him" and Three Tall Women, "an act of peacemaking" with his adoptive mother, Frances (Frankié) Albee. The scene of the second act in Three Tall Women that always moves the playwright is when "the son, Albee's surrogate, comes onstage and sits by the bedside of his mother". Three Tall Women is the drama of Albees' replicas. The character A (and her unnamed husband, who likes only tall women) explicitly stands for Frances (Frankié) A|^

e

e, while the son of A bears not only the trademark of the playwright but highly identifies with him. There is a special monologue in the play, which is uttered by another character, B, who is in fact a younger version of the character A. The character of B recalls an episode of lovemaking, which she had with a groom in a stable stall, an affair that her son (the Young Man) discovered. The indirect, metonymical reference to A/Frankie is 136