Alfred Dorfer turns 65 while touring Austria with Gleich

Austrian cabaret artist and actor Alfred Dorfer turns 65 on Sunday as he tours Austria with his programme Gleich, ORF reports.

Dorfer was born in Vienna on October 11, 1961. He initially wanted to become a surgeon, but said his manual skills might have made him “a danger to the general public”. Instead, he studied theatre and completed a doctorate in 2011 with a dissertation on satire in restrictive systems in 20th-century Europe.

His career took off in the early 1990s with two films that became Austrian classics: Muttertag, based on a piece by the cabaret group Schlabarett, which Dorfer co-founded, and the tragicomedy Indien, which he wrote with Josef Hader. The pair still perform readings in character as Heinz Bösel and Kurt Fellner.

Dorfer went on to appear in films including Freispiel, Wanted and Poppitz, as well as the sitcom MA 2412, in which he starred alongside Roland Düringer. The series later returned with new episodes, and a cinema version, MA 2412: Die Staatsdiener, was released in 2003.

He began his solo cabaret career in 1993 with Alles Gute. His programme heim.at, which dealt with the first ÖVP-FPÖ government, won the German Small Arts Prize. His current show, Gleich, is scheduled to tour until March 2027.

Dorfer has also written for newspapers and television, and directed an opera production of Le Nozze di Figaro, which was filmed for television without an audience during the pandemic. This spring, he appeared in Kommissar Rex as forensic pathologist Dr Tom Wippler.