The Death of Meienberg - The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents - The Bus

»Starting with The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents, Lukas Bärfuss has stormed the German stage« writes Die Welt; Radio Switzerland celebrates this work as the »the apotheosis of theater.« So far there have been ten productions of this play in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and translations into 12 European languages for stages from Iceland to Greece. The author has been writing plays since 1998 and has created a furor with the independent group »400asa«, which sees itself as part of the tradition of the Danish Dogma film-makers. Bärfuss takes all that in stride and has asserted that theater interests him precisely »as an especially imperfect art. Everything grates and grinds. I myself grind, the actors grind, even the old chairs.« In The Sexual Neuroses, the mentally handicapped Dora is in a certain sense such a grain of sand in the works of the good, liberal society - not when she fulfils the role of the merely pitiable, but with immediate effect when she makes her own demands and no longer serves as the projection screen for all the nonsense about tolerance. To get behind mere words to the real things, and moreover to make his way through to the comical effect from the mischievous questioning of authority - these were already themes concerning the young Swiss author in his The Death of Meienberg from 2001.

This volume is completed by Bärfuss`s most recent work, The Bus, which is about an extremely peculiar pilgrimage to Czestochowa. Its debut performance will be at the Thalia Theater, shortly thereafter its first performance in Switzerland in the Stadt Theater of Bern, and thereafter at the Schauspiel in Cologne.

»The peculiar world of images and the linguistic succinctness of his text show Bärfuss to be a poet among playwrights. What further characterizes his works is that they describe the deficits of society without a know-it-all attitude, and the human descents into the abyss without voyeurism.«
Die Welt

»Nobody apparently knows so exactly how to free postmodern theater from its own cul-de-sac like Lukas Bärfuss.«
Tan Wälchi, WOZ: Die Wochenzeitung

Lukas Bärfuss
born in Thun, Switzerland in 1971, is one of the most successful dramatists to emerge in recent years, and his plays are staged all over the world. Bärfuss was voted playwright of the year in the critic poll featured by the magazine »Theater heute« in 2005. Amongst many other awards, he has also won the Mühlheim Dramatist Prize. He lives with his wife and two children in Zurich.

Rights sold
Bulgaria: Pygmalion Press (The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents. The Bus. The Death of Meienberg)
France: LArche Editeur (The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents. The Bus. Four pictures of Love)
Poland: Ksiergarnia Akademicka (The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents. The Bus)
UK: Nick Hern Books Limited (The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents)
Romanian: Europress Group (The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents. The Bus)