at deal of exposure to plays and theater people at a young age. Albee was not very adept at schoolwork though he showed promise as a writer from a young age. He dropped out of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, after a year and a half to pursue a writing career full time in New York. However, while at Trinity, Albee did gain theater experience by playing a variety of characters in plays produced by the college drama department. Albee’s success did not come overnight despite his literary promise and his high-profile contacts in the theater. Instead, he labored at odd jobs for nearly a decade before his “breakthrough” came upon the publication of The Zoo Story, a one-act play modeled on the Theater of the Absurd ala playwrights like Beckett, Genet and Pinter. The play was astonishingly accomplished for a first effort but Albee had to be convinced to try his hand at writing plays, “Originally his writing efforts focused on poetry and fiction until Thornton Wilder encouraged him to try playwrighting” (Artists 1).
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