please welcome edward albee. [applause] i was struck by the number of times people have objected to your work. and yet, i've sat here with people whose careers have been marked by censorship and challenges. i'm not sure i've ever met anyone whose very first work at age 12 was censored by his adoptive mother. what was that about? well, you see, i started writing poetry when i was about eight, and she didn't read poetry. but when she found out that i'd written a three-act sex farce... [laughter] at the age of 12, or to be fair about it, probably 12 1/2, though still i didn't know very much about farce and practically nothing about sex at that time-- or at least, my knowledge of sex was singular-- [laughter] i wrote this three-act sex farce. very short acts. each act was about eight or ten minutes. and i'd like to think that she threw it away. i know i gave it to her to read, and it was not discussed after that, and i didn't make carbon copies or anything in those days, and so it vanished. so she became my first cri