Die Erfindung

Are they fighting again? Every night, C and S lie in bed bothered by shouting coming from their neighbour's flat. Is someone crying? Hopefully not the children? How are we supposed to sleep now?
C recently read an abstruse novel: A killer removes all his victims' limbs and leaves them to live on "wormed", as worm-like creatures. As a gruesome pastime on sleepless nights, C and S establish a bogus online shop for armless and legless people, which proves extremely exciting and fascinating. Things grow sinister however, as hundreds of orders for the horribly disfigured victims arrive through their Darknet-website: the brutal novel fantasies appear to be taking on a life of their own. The possibility of committing a bloodthirsty crime after all, leads the couple into mutual suspicion and paranoia. Will they be able to protect themselves after all?

In Clemens Setz's commissioned work for Schauspiel Stuttgart, hidden fears burst through the door. Alongside suspense, horror stories recount social strife, violence and survival. Beneath the protective covers of civilisation, Setz uncovers something that otherwise only lurks in the shadows. What is reality behind the bourgeois façade, what is fake in the age of digital existence? Perhaps atrocities are mirrored in the couple's seemingly harmless behaviour, throwing their reality out of kilter.