About the Play:

At Home at the Zoo is a full-length drama by Edward Albee, which consists of the playwright's groundbreaking 1959 one-act The Zoo Story and its later prequel Homelife. In act one, Homelife, we meet Peter and his wife, who live a comfortable but vaguely unhappy bourgeois existence; in the second act, the classic The Zoo Story, Peter is forever altered by an oddly persistent stranger in Central Park.

The Zoo Story offers a most incredible park bench chat by two strangers with twists and turns and a "hold on to your hat" surprise climax! "I've been to the zoo." These opening words usher the audience into one of the most iconic plays in American theater history: The Zoo Story depicts a disturbing encounter between Peter, a complacent middle-class man, and the deranged Jerry, a troubled young homeless man, on a Central Park bench. With jolts of brutality and Edward Albee's signature dark humor, this seminal play explores both the love and the cruelty that we inflict on each other every day. More than fifty years later, master playwright Edward Albee wrote a prequel to this classic by adding a first act. Homelife contains the events in Peter's life immediately preceding his fateful meeting with Jerry on a park bench in Central Park, and is every bit as powerful as the original. Collected in one volume, The Zoo Story may be performed independently. However, Homelife may only be performed as act one of the full-length play At Home at the Zoo.

His first produced play, The Zoo Story opened with a bang at the Schiller Theater in Berlin on a double bill with Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape in 1959. After winning a Berlin Festival Award and much critical praise in Germany, it was less than three months before The Zoo Story finally opened in New York. It debuted off-Broadway at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1960, and instantly had a strong impact on critics and audiences alike. The famous two-hander has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 1 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Edward Albee is our greatest playwright, delivering a genuinely fascinating, first-class drama that calls out to be seen." — Journal News

"An essential and heartening experience…If Homelife is an openhanded slap, The Zoo Story is a gut punch with a closed fist. Edward Albee is a voice unparalleled in American theater." — The New York Times

"The dialogue crackles and the tension runs high." — Associated Press

"Darkly comic and thrilling." — Time Out New York

About the Playwright:

Edward Albee (1928-2016) was an American playwright. Widely considered the foremost American dramatist of his generation, he wrote and directed some of the best plays in contemporary American theatre. Three of his plays have received Pulitzer Prizes, and two won a Tony Award for best play. He was awarded the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980, and in 1996 he received both the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts. In 2005 he was awarded the special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.