![]() ![]() When words fail them, their gestures speak volumes about their relationships with others. Along the way, the dying women (and their deathbed helpers) share autobiographical anecdotes, addressing the audience directly, if the other characters onstage prove to be bad listeners. Her journey across that border is eased by the appearance of one or more unexpected end-of-life companions. Each of the plays in this study portrays a woman poised at the border between life and death. The essay addresses Albee’s work as an innovator of theatrical thanatology-that is, dramatizing the dying process and modeling interactions between the dying and their caregivers-while writing strong women characters. Using these myriad communication strategies, the playwright offers his audiences (and his readers) a roadmap to our own extinction, challenging us to approach dying intentionally in order to live our lives more fully. This chapter traces Edward Albee’s use of direct address, gestural storytelling, and mythic metaphor in service to his thanatological themes in three plays- The Sandbox (1960), The Lady from Dubuque (1980) and Three Tall Women (1991)-in which the playwright places the act of dying at center stage.
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