At the center of the piece are workers in cleaning, food delivery, and elder care — the very service providers who ease everyday life for their customers, taking over unwanted tasks and offering them free time, comfort, and "me-time."
Over the course of an extensive long-term investigation, Christiane Mudra conducted numerous interviews with the workers themselves, as well as background conversations with counseling centers, union representatives, and legal experts. She has woven these soundbites, original statements and contextual information into a dramaturgical script.

“Exploitation is the foundation of our affluent society.”

How does a society determine the prestige of professions? Why do workers in these essential service sectors receive so little recognition?
How do the workers themselves rate their working and living conditions?
What goes through the mind of a delivery driver who has to wait in freezing temperatures outside a restaurant? How does the cleaner who scrubs filthy hotel rooms for less than minimum wage on a tight schedule feel?
What kind of dependency is created when residency permits and housing are tied to a job, as is the case for many so-called “live-ins”?
And where does labor exploitation cross the line into human trafficking?

In the face of increasingly deserted city centers due to online retail and the real estate collapse of the Signa Group led by financial juggler René Benko, “XPLOIT:S” takes the audience behind the scenes of glittering shopfronts and promises of consumption into the basement of the former department store Kaufhof am Stachus. Four performers expose realities that most people choose not to see in their daily lives.

The evening gives voice to those who work under the radar, at night and out of sight, who disappear during inspections, are quietly removed after accidents, and are ignored in everyday life. The evening focuses on workers’ perspectives, illuminating systemic problems and identifying legal protection gaps.

“That’s a cleaner doing a backbreaking job, underpaid, cleaning up your colleagues’ feces. I expect respect.”

At a time when migrants are increasingly portrayed across party lines as a burden to society, the performance also reminds us that foreign labor has been instrumental in building and sustaining Germany’s prosperity: From the so-called “guest workers” of the 1960s to today’s foreign and migrant employees and, in view of demographic shifts, to an even greater extent in the future.

“XPLOIT:S” sheds light on the working conditions described and makes the people behind the service visible, aiming to foster empathy, recognition, and social solidarity.








Following “SELFIE & ICH” (2022), an evening about mental illness, achievement-based society and the terror of happiness, and “HOTEL UTOPIA” (2023), an interactive parlor game about borders, bureaucracy and the value of passports, “XPLOIT:S” marks the third part of Christiane Mudra's trilogy entitled “How much am I?”, in which she examines the de facto valuation of human lives in the so-called “community of values”.