The Weather Continues . . . : IN MEMORIUM: Playwright, Winner of More PULITZER PRIZES than Tennessee Williams -- and My Personal Friend (-ish) -- Mr. Edward Albee:

Friday, September 16, 2016

IN MEMORIUM: Playwright, Winner of More PULITZER PRIZES than Tennessee Williams -- and My Personal Friend (-ish) -- Mr. Edward Albee:

George Segal, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966

Scott Kenan

I was first "connected" to Edward Albee in 1973, when a boyfriend my senior year at Denison University, Jeff Work, told me HIS old Swedish boyfriend, Sjell, had dated Albee for a while and LIVED TO TELL!!!

Then, in late 1981. Albee joined Tennessee Williams and me in taking a cab from the Watergate Hotel to the main (most fancy) US State Department Banquet Room, where the 1981 Kennedy Center Honors were actually given, Audrey Hepburn sitting at the Head Table with Tennessee Williams and me and others (Secretary Alexander Haig, at the SECOND table and a real "glass-BANGER") -- before the Public Ceremony in the Opera House of the Kennedy Center the next night (after a visit to the Reagan White House), that was taped and rebroadcast that December 26 by CBS.

Here's my first-hand account of seeing myself on "National TV" in the living room of my parents' house on the tidal creek in Hampstead, North Carolina, with Mom, Jane Anne Kenan, Michael William Kenan, and Julia Ruth Kenan (later Duffy), displaying SERIOUSLY different states of consciousness (and Dad never watched "such things"):

http://laterdaysoftennesseewilliams.blogspot.com/2013/10/chapter-16-christmas-and-real-world.html

Then in 2010, after Alyson Books cancelled the contracted hard-cover release of my WALKING ON GLASS, A MEMOIR OF THE LATER DAYS OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (for purely Political reasons), Edward Albee stepped in at the 2010 The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, replacing me on TWO of the three panel discussions I had been booked and contracted to be on (and Albee did GREAT -- I listening to the audio over the internet) -- when Thomas Elliott Keith on behalf the Episcopal Church USA and Sewanee, University of the South, who had MURDERED Tennessee, got angry and made Paul Willis CANCEL MY GIG (but I'm NOT angry with Paul or Janet Daley Duval)!!!-- and that Festival has STILL not APOLOGIZED TO ME!!!

In comments below, I'll paste in my memoir's chapter of that entire day.