About the work
Rebekka Kricheldorf's comedy was premiered in 2006 at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden and gave the author her breakthrough into the German-language theatre scene. The play is a sharp study of milieu about the so-called "internship generation" (Generation Praktikum) and the difficulty of growing up when the traditional patterns of life — work, family, a home — are no longer available.
Plot
A group of people in their early thirties gathers for dinner at the home of the most successful of their clique, who has just bought a freehold apartment. The others are variously freelancing, unemployed, or back in an internship. Between ironic jokes, academic quotations and the obligatory relationship drama, the cracks appear: envy, shame, the fear of having missed the boat, the question of children and career prospects. Kricheldorf shows how permanent self-staging within one's social circle becomes a substitute for real life decisions — and how painful coming to terms with this realisation can be.
Cultural significance
Die Erwachsenen established Kricheldorf as one of the most unerring analysts of milieu in contemporary German drama. The play has been performed at numerous German-language stages and is regarded as a generational portrait of the post-1968, pre-children generation of the 2000s. Kricheldorf's strength — that precise ear for the telltale subordinate clauses of academic-liberal self-talk — has had a lasting influence on contemporary theatre.