Stage

SAN DIEGO — Playwright Edward Albee shared his vision of art’s place in society following an appearance Friday at the Bishop’s School theater in La Jolla, an event benefiting the 44th Congressional District High School Art Competition.

Art is part of the evolutionary process, Albee explained with customary wit.

“One day our tails fell off and we grew art, we grew metaphor,” Albee said. “It’s our responsibility to evolution, as much as to ourselves, to be involved in the arts as much as we possibly can.”

Albee, on a short, theater-related stint in San Diego, credited his early interests in all of the arts with helping his literary efforts.

“I decided I was a writer at 7, and when I was 11, a composer, though I was too incompetent to learn how to play the piano. At 14, I decided I was a painter, and actually I won an award at school for my second painting, but I didn’t win anything for my third, or fourth, or fifth . . . “

Winners of the local High School Art Competition from the last two years were on hand to hear Albee’s thoughts on a “cross-fertilization among the arts” and his lament that some children “are allowed to grow up and reach a point where they are remote from art.”

In an ideal society, he said, “participation in the arts would be as natural as breathing, and we should encourage our children to breathe as normally as possible.”