caused controversy for containing explicit scenes. His later plays contain less violence and sexuality, and are more influenced by Bertolt Brecht. Oberösterreich (Upper Austria, 1972) and Das Nest (The Nest, 1974) garnered popular and critical acclaim. The former marked a shift from portraying (in Kroetz's words) the "milieu of the extreme" to portraying average people who lack pent-up frutrations and communicate more effectively. Donna L. Hoffmeister wrote that the work "was presented, according to my count, by forty different theaters between 1974 and 1976 and the play Das Nest (1974) by about twenty theaters in the 1976/77 season". In The Nest, the protagonist is a truck driver. His boss orders him to dump toxic waste into a lake, thus soiling his "nest." After the early plays, he tried writing works for television because he wanted to reach a wider audience, and his move to TV had this effect, with Maria Magdalena viewed by five to 15 million. The contemporary television fare cautioned through comedy against activism by workers, and Kroetz wished to refunction televisual Volkstheater for progressive aims. His works for television have been described as "metacritiques of the television industry" that thematize its detrimental impact on viewers. Das Nest was first produced for television in 1976, and aired in West Germany in 1979. Upper Austria was first broadcast in 1973. The broadcaster ZDF postponed Upper Austria for months due to its politics. Kroetz moved into social realism with Through the Leaves (1976) and Tom Fool (1978), the latter of which was a success. He considers Upper Austria, The Nest, and Tom Fool to form a trilogy. He wrote a libretto based on his play Stallerhof (1971) for an opera of the same name which Gerd Kühr composed in 1987/88. It was premiered at the first Munich Biennale in 1988. The play was staged at the Burgtheater in 2010 by David Bösch. In her book Franz Xaver Kroetz: The Construction of a Political Aesthetic, Michelle Mattson of the Columbia University summarizes: Franz Xaver Kroetz – banana-cutter, hospital orderly, fledgling actor and, more significantly, Germany's most popular contemporary dramatist of the seventies and early eighties. This study, which situates Kroetz's aesthetics in a political context, focuses on four plays that mark crisis points in his development of a political aesthetic. Kroetz wrote for the television series Tatort, Spiel mit Karten in 1980 and Wolf im Schafspelz in 2002. He is also