Wolfgang Bauer was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n writer best known as a playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 who, particularly in his younger days, was regarded as an enfant terrible by the Austrian cultural establishment

The Establishment

The Establishment is a term used to refer to a visible dominant group or elite that holds power or authority in a nation. The term suggests a closed social group which selects its own members...

.

Life and career

Bauer was born in Graz

Graz

The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...

, Styria

Styria (state)

Styria is a state or Bundesland, located in the southeast of Austria. In area it is the second largest of the nine Austrian federated states, covering 16,401 km². It borders Slovenia as well as the other Austrian states of Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Salzburg, Burgenland, and Carinthia. ...

. His breakthrough play was Magic Afternoon in 1967, in which he portrays four youths who interrupt their lazy and boring afternoon by unmotivated outbreaks of violence

Violence

Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...

 and aggression

Aggression

In psychology, as well as other social and behavioral sciences, aggression refers to behavior between members of the same species that is intended to cause humiliation, pain, or harm. Ferguson and Beaver defined aggressive behavior as "Behavior which is intended to increase the social dominance of...

 (Magic Afternoon was adapted for the screen most recently by Catherine Jelski in 2000 as The Young Unknowns). After two more successes, Change (1969) and Gespenster (Ghosts, 1973), Bauer's plays became increasingly surreal

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 and experimental. Bauer though resisted any labelling by academia

Academia

Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...

 and critics alike until his death. Most of his plays during 1967 and 1990 were translated into English by Martin Esslin

Martin Esslin

Martin Julius Esslin OBE was a Hungarian-born English producer and playwright dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama best known for coining the term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his work of that name...

, remembered for coining the term Theatre of the Absurd

Theatre of the Absurd

The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction, written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work...

. In the late 1970's and early 1980's San Francisco's Magic Theatre

Magic Theatre

The Magic Theatre is a theatre company founded in 1967, presently based at the historic Fort Mason Center on San Francisco's northern waterfront...

 performed almost each season a play of Bauer, 1993 his play Tadpoletigermosquitos at Mulligan's was premiered at New York's Ohio Theatre.

Wolfgang Bauer was a heavy smoker

Tobacco smoking

Tobacco smoking is the practice where tobacco is burned and the resulting smoke is inhaled. The practice may have begun as early as 5000–3000 BCE. Tobacco was introduced to Eurasia in the late 16th century where it followed common trade routes...

 and drinker

Alcoholism

Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...

. After a series of cardiac operations, he died in his native Graz of heart failure.

Works

Bauer's plays have been translated into 24 languages and have been performed in 35 countries. This is a complete list of his published works in German:

Plays

• Der Schweinetransport (1961)
• Maler und Farbe (1961)
• Batyscaphe 17-26 oder Die Hölle ist oben (1961)
• Totu-wa-botu (1961)
• Zwei Fliegen auf einem Gleis (1962)
• Katharina Doppelkopf (1962)
• Der Rüssel (1962)
• Mikrodramen (1962/63, 21 very short "unplayable plays", engl. title: Microdramas)
• Pfnacht (1963)
• Die Menschenfresser (1963)
• Party for Six (1964)
• Ende sogar noch besser als alles gut! (1965)
• Der Tod des Ingenieurs Leo Habernik aus Linz (1965)
• Magic Afternoon (1967)
• Change (1968/69)
• Film und Frau (1971, engl. title: "Shakespeare the Sadist")
• Silvester oder Das Massaker im Hotel Sacher (1971)
• Gespenster (1973, engl. title: Ghosts)
• Magnetküsse (1975, engl. title: Magnetic Kisses)
• Memory Hotel (1979/80, UA + ED 1980)
• Woher kommen wir? Was sind wir? Wohin gehen wir? (1981, engl. title: Singapore Sling)
• Das kurze Leben der Schneewolken (1982)
• Ein fröhlicher Morgen beim Friseur (1982, engl. title: A Wonderful Day at the Barbershop))
• Ein schrecklicher Traum (1986, an adaption of Shakespeare's A Midsummernight's Dream)
• Herr Faust spielt Roulette (1986)
• Das Lächeln des Brian dePalma (1988)
• Ach, armer Orpheus! (1989)
• Insalata mista (1992, engl. title: Tadpoltigermosquitos at Mulligan's)
• Die Kantine. Cappricio à la Habsburg. (1993)
• Die Menschenfabrik (1996)
• Skizzenbuch (1996)
• Café Tamagotchi (1998)
• Foyer (2004)

Libretti

• Magnet (1978)
• Café Museum - Die Erleuchtung. (1993)
• Das gestohlene Herz (2004)

Poems

• Das stille Schilf. Ein schlechtes Meisterwerk: schlechte Texte mit schlechten Zeichnungen und einer schlechten Schallplatte. (1969)
• Das Herz (1981)

Radio Plays

• Zisterne (1961)
• Die Entfernung (1972, alt. title: 1431)
• Dream Jockey (1998)

Screenplays

• Die Edeggerfamilie (1970)
• Häuptling der Alpen (1974)
• Es war nicht die Nachtigall (1974)
• Reise zum Gehirn (1975, adaption of Bauers novel Der Fieberkopf (The Feverhead))
• In Zeiten wie diesen (1983)
• 22, schwarz... (1987)
• Der Weihnachtstraum (1994)