Initially the play was rejected by New York producers. Albee first had it staged in Europe, premiering in West Berlin at the Schiller Theater Werkstatt on September 28, 1959. In its first American staging, it was performed by the Provincetown Playhouse in 1960 and paired with Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. In this first American production, Peter and Jerry were played by William Daniels and George Maharis, respectively.
Read more about The Zoo Story: Plot Summary, Additional Act, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words zoo and/or story:
“...there was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. ...I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened.”
—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)
“Personal beauty is then first charming and itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when it suggests gleams and visions, and not earthly satisfactions; when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were Caesar; he cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and the splendors of a sunset.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)