FELICIA ZELLER, GERMANY

What is insane is that insanity now seems to be normal for everyone.

Three work-obsessed characters on the cusp of a nervous breakdown and a sculpted work of art, the pinnacle of a series titled X-Freunde, are the stars of this performance from Berlin, delivered at a frantic pace, using unexpected speech and grotesque humor. It was presented at Theater unterm Dach, directed by Stephan Thiel, and was listed as one of the 10 best plays in Germany for 2013, by the theatrical industry portal www.nachtkritik.de. Felicia Zeller, an author who stands out for her condensed and imaginative use of language, cauterizes, in this work, a typical German social disease: addiction to work which ends up being work for its own sake.