‘At Home at the Zoo’ expands Albee’s classic one-act play - The Washington Post

‘At Home at the Zoo’ expands Albee’s classic one-act play - The Washington Post:

"Now, Albee, apparently thinking he hadn’t finished with Peter in the piece from 50 years ago, has composed a companion playlet as a prologue, and conjoined the two in “At Home at the Zoo.” As a result, the premise of “The Zoo Story” gains more context, even if audiences reap only a rather modest extra helping of drama."

Young Edward Albee

An interesting thing to do, to say the least. I played Peter in the one-act in the 70s at Pemberton Free Theater, a company I founded in Salisbury, Maryland. It was an outdoor production in our rented farm's backyard area, a perfect setting. And with a large appreciative audience from the college. A hit! Tom Strah played Jerry, Jeff Rollins directed, theater buddies.

It's being done locally, so we hope to catch it in January.

Interesting war story from the Salisbury show we did. Outdoors, beautiful day. As Tom as Jerry began the "story of Jerry and the dog", I noticed a large dog trotting across the adjacent field our way. Oh my God! How would the story work with a LITERAL dog on the set? Fortunately, somebody in the audience, somebody wise, also saw the dog coming and herded it off in another direction, so the story was left to the imagination. But sitting on my bench as Peter, listening to the story, a part of me aware of the approaching dog, I think my blood pressure went up considerably -- which, in the end, I was able to use in my performance!

In the audience was Leland Starnes, chair of the college's theater dept, semi-retired from the Yale Drama School, who directed me in college productions and as an actor, under his tutelage, I learned as much about playwriting as I'd learned before working with him. My mentor at Oregon, Dean Regenos, and Starnes, both came to playwriting from acting, i.e. actor is the tool, not language per se, and this is the best way to approach it, I learned. Which is why playwriting programs belong in theater departments, not English departments.

Ah, sweet memories.