Werner Schwab

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Werner Schwab (February 4, 1958 - January 1, 1994) was an Austrian playwright and visual artist.

From 1978 to 1982 he studied sculpture at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna. During the 1980s he worked as a sculptor and woodcutter.

Schwab's first play Die Präsidentinnen was produced at the Theater im Künstlerhaus in Vienna in 1990. Between then and his death four years later he wrote sixteen plays, eight of which were produced during his lifetime, making his career one of the briefest, most spectacular and most controversial in contemporary German-language theatre.

Schwab's work tends to be extremely scatological, full of images of surreal violence and degradation, and his texts exploit the German language's capacity for neologism to a remarkable degree; they are also firmly within a native Austrian tradition of Black comedy. He is very difficult to translate, but amongst English-language dramatists, certain stylistic parallels might be drawn between his work and that of Steven Berkoff and Enda Walsh.

Schwab was a heavy drinker who was said to have written his plays late at night while listening to loud music (particularly the band Einstürzende Neubauten, whom he was friends with). His body was found on New Year's Day 1994.

Contents

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Plays
  • Die Präsidentinnen. 1990.
  • Übergewicht, unwichtig: Unform. Ein europäisches Abendmahl. 1991.
  • Volksvernichtung oder meine Leber ist sinnlos. 1991.
  • Mein Hundemund. 1992.
  • Mesaillance aber wir ficken uns prächtig. 1992.
  • Der Himmel mein Lieb meine sterbende Beute. 1992.
  • Offene Gruben und offene Fenster. Ein Fall von Ersprechen. 1992.
  • Pornogeographie. Sieben Gerüchte. 1993.
  • Endlich tot, endlich keine Luft mehr. 1994.
  • Mariedl/Antiklima(x). 1994.
  • Mein Brustkorb: Mein Helm. 1994.
  • Troilluswahn und Cressidatheater. 1995.
  • Eskalation ordinär. Ein Schwitzkastenschwank in sieben Affekten. 1995.

[edit] Books by Werner Schwab
  • Holy Mothers, translation by Meredith Oakes of Die Präsidentinnen (Oberon, 1999) ISBN 1-84002-113-6
  • An Anthology of Plays, translated by Michael Mitchell (Ariadne Press, 1999) ISBN 1-57241-064-7

People Annihilation or my Liver is Sick, translated by Michael Roloff [Ariadne Press] U.S. Premiere, Chicago, Trapdoor Theater, 2005

[edit] External links

[edit] Sources

Ulm Sanford, Gerlinde, Afterword to Schwab, An Anthology of Plays (Ariadne, 1999)

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