Lithuanian and American playwright, literary historian, critic, journalist.
Studied at Kaunas "Aušra" Gymnasium, 1944 - actor at Kaunas Youth Theatre. As the frontline approached, he moved to Germany and graduated from the gymnasium in Lübeck. In 1946-1949 he studied at the Baltic University in Hamburg, in 1949 he came to the USA, in 1952 he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Lithuanian Studies and Slavonic Studies; he was one of the last students of Vince Krėve.
Head of the University of Pennsylvania Music Library. He collaborated in the Lithuanian press in the USA, many of his plays were published by the magazine "Metmenys".
He started writing plays in 1951. Most of his plays are short, like novellas, usually with two or three characters, the action concentrates on one theme or motif. Ostrauskas' "serious" works form a separate group. These are plays in which not so much comedy prevails as the tragic aspects of existence: Duobkasiai (1964-1965) is a paraphrase of the cemetery scene in Hamlet; Once Upon a Time There Lived a Grandfather and a Grandmother (1963-1969) is a paraphrase of Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Ostrauskas's most musical work is Quartet (1969). He has also written several philosophical plays, such as "Ars amoris" (1979), "Anna and Emma" (1989), etc.
