Wolfgang Maria Bauer

“The setting: a cemetery. A gravestone made from green travertine marks the grave of a man. It is September. The characters: the widow and a stranger. For a few days now she has been watching him watching her. He gives her the creeps, and exudes violence and a secret that she feels is connected to her. She has to talk to him, has to know, has to be sure. Her first approach is almost involuntary and leads her, as if sleepwalking, along the trail of their relationship: the stranger crafted the tombstone of her husband. It shows an inverted figure, the man, “hidden in himself”. The reply of the man is outrageous: “I’ve come to destroy you”. Abruptly, this seemingly private story has become one of violence. Suddenly, the stranger could be an assassin, the woman his victim. Suddenly, they are both representatives of their cultures, two worlds fighting for their identity. In the struggle of the individuum, the mechanisms of exploitation, guilt and revenge that move world affairs today become clear. This makes Late Rage a pointed analysis of the stubbornness of all human truths, a mind game about the question of the origin of terrorism and governmental violence.
Late Rage is a whodunnit and a discourse about the (im)possibility of understanding.”