Franz Xaver Kroetz, the author of more than fifty plays, is the most prolific and successful representative of the
Neues(new), also called the
Kritisches(critical)
Volksstück(folk play), a genre which overlaps with neo-regional, dialect, working-class and “shock” drama, all movements that flourished in the late 1960s and 1970s. Still considered significant and widely performed in the early twenty-first century, Kroetz’s folk dramas, often written in Bavarian dialect, had their greatest success in the 1970s, the decade after the sensational premieres of his brutal, naturalistic one-act pieces
Heimarbeit[
Homework] and
Hartnäckig[
Stiff-necked] in 1971. Proponents of the “new” folk play extended the tradition of the socially critical folk plays of Ödön von Horváth and…
2065 words
Citation: Saur, Pamela S.. "Franz Xaver Kroetz". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 August 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12642, accessed 23 November 2024.]
