Fisheye portrait of cast of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1965
Originally uploaded by Bob Willoughby
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won both the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1962-63 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play, says Wikipedia. It was also selected for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Drama by that award's drama jury. However, the award's advisory board—the trustees of Columbia University—objected to the play's then-controversial use of profanity and sexual themes, and overruled the award's advisory committee, awarding no Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1963.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play on the title of the once popular song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Walt Disney's The Three Little Pigs, but named after a famous English novelist.
In the play, George and Martha invite a new professor and his wife to their house after a party. Martha is the daughter of the president of a university where George is an associate history professor. Nick (who is never addressed or introduced by name) is a biology professor who Martha thinks teaches math, and Honey is his mousy, brandy-abusing wife. Once at home, Martha and George continue drinking and engage in relentless, scathing verbal and sometimes physical abuse in front of Nick and Honey. The younger couple are simultaneously fascinated and embarrassed. They stay even though the abuse turns periodically towards them as well.
The darker veins running through the play's dialogue suggest that the border between fiction and reality is continually challenged. The play ends with Martha answering the titular question of who is afraid to live their life free of illusions with, "I am, George, I am." Implicitly, exposure is something everyone fears; façade (be it social or psychological), although damaging, provides a comfort.
By 1962 Americans, it seemed, were ready for such satire. There was a groundswell of interest in the play, which in its own way was an inspiration (if in small part) to the millions of young people in the 1960s and 70s who were not interested in what they regarded as a rat-race. The next generation imagined that they were not going to make the same mistakes as their parents.
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