The world could be so simple if no one interfered in her well-organised life. When things are going well for Cheryl, it feels like a flow, her rehearsed routines of thoughtful daily management and self-organisation, almost as if she had domestic staff, when in fact it is she herself who works so compulsively to ensure that her life runs smoothly. And the better it flows, the less noticeable it is that this life is actually quite lonely,
without friendships, with only a few work relationships and, above all, without the experience of what love really feels like.

Life is complicated

Or rather, in reality: Cheryl lives in a world of her own fantasies, in which she desires the board member of the company she works for (which sells self-defence videos for women). Philipp, an old fart with little capacity for empathy. He, in turn, is in love with a woman who is far too young and asks Cheryl for permission for this love with obscene text messages. But that's not a big problem, because in Cheryl's fantasy, Philipp and she have been a couple since at least the Stone Age, as connected as their two lives feel.

Could it be love?

So it's understandably an almost seismic shock when Clee suddenly moves in with her, a woman half her age, with long blonde hair, smelly feet and, to put it mildly, a rather unpretentious manner. At first, she just sprawls out on the sofa, but soon after, she questions Cheryl's entire life: is it possible that she has fallen in love with this woman?

Life under control?

Miranda July, born in 1974, is an American successful author, but also a multimedia artist, director and performer. In her works people talk to cats, families live off cunning scams and can never be sure whether the plots Miranda July writes for them will suddenly take a completely unexpected turn. Behind every bourgeois and well-behaved façade, things are simmering, and each of July's stories cleverly, lovingly and with the finest sense of the neurotic potential of humanity in late capitalism, exposes the claim that one now knows how things work and has one's own life under control – as just that a claim.

At Deutsches Theater The First Bad Man, Mirandy July's first novel published in 2015, is adapted as a monologue with ensemble member Maren Eggert.