Discourses of the I: The Panic of Identity in Edward Albee’s Me, Myself and I

“Hello, there! My name is OTTO. [...] I want to make trouble because I want to make things even more complicated than they are around here, and then maybe I can get out of this whole mess – this family and everything. Let’s see: my name is OTTO. I have an identical twin brother. I’m trying to get rid of him, rid of all of them – but it’s not easy: you know how twins are; well, maybe you don’t” – OTTO, one of the identical twin brothers (both named Otto) of Edward Albee’s Me, Myself and I opens the play addressing the audience. Albee’s wit and sharp irony dominate the play, managing to “engage, to upset, to trouble” audiences and readers. In my paper I analyze the methods Albee employs in transforming the stage into a meta- and intertextual “space” subverting and undermining any belief in identity and language as fixed, stable and functional “entities.”