3rd Act of Seascape

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 12/29/05 at 9:52am

I remember reading that there was an abandoned 3rd act of Seascape, with the characters going into the ocean. What is it about and how does it end?

There was a summary written in a book about Albee, but I can't seem to find anything.

[myManCape]

Posted: 12/30/05 at 12:43am

If I remember reading correctly, there was a second act where the lizard characters are developed underwater. Never saw or read this act but I remember reading about it. Albee cut the middle act himself after the first reading of the play. So it would not have affected the story’s outcome. Since then Albee has warned other authors about 3 act plays claming that the middle act is often lost and forgotten, and audiences don’t have time for 3 acts anymore.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 12/30/05 at 1:32am

Yes, it was the original Act Two that was cut. It took place underwater and the characters were apparently attacked at one point by a killer octopus and there were lobsters and moray eels. Albee felt that with it, he was "getting into intellectual depths I couldn't handle. The play was turning into a thesis." He took some of the essential dialogue from the act and distributed into the current two act version of the play.

Interestingly, the original three act version was performed once by a theatre in the Netherlands which was on the verge of staging the play around the time the Broadway version was going into rehearsals, so there was no time excise the original second act. Other than that one time, SEASCAPE has been a two act play -- all on land.

[shermanslave]

Posted: 12/30/05 at 7:47pm

I just saw the show last night and can't help but wonder about the second act thatused to be. You learn so much about the humans and so little about the lizards(?) that it would have been very interesting to see an act of each couple and then a third act with both couples. I do agree that audiences don't have time for three acts anymore.

I did enjoy the show a lot though.