About the work
The Zoo Story is a one-act play by Edward Albee, premiered in 1959 in Berlin (in German) and in 1960 in New York. It was Albee's debut and a key work of American absurdist theatre about loneliness, alienation, and the impossibility of genuine communication.
Plot
On a Sunday afternoon in New York's Central Park, the well-off, respectable publishing employee Peter sits on a park bench. The ragged, restless outsider Jerry forces himself upon him and draws him into an increasingly oppressive conversation. Jerry recounts his bleak life in a rooming house and his grotesque "battle" with the landlady's dog. Ever more aggressively he provokes Peter until he forces him to grab a knife, and throws himself onto it—a desperate act that establishes the only human "contact" Jerry can achieve.
Cultural significance
The Zoo Story established Albee at once as a significant new voice in American theatre. The one-act play condenses the existential isolation of the modern city dweller and the longing for contact into a shocking finale. With its mixture of naturalistic dialogue and absurd escalation, the play became a much-performed classic and a precursor of Albee's later worldwide success Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.