One morning, Aleksandr Plotnikov wakes up in his room in Moscow and realizes that his homeland has started a war. He is twenty-six years old and graduated from directing school a few months ago. Now he wonders how long he has been asleep. He goes into exile in Armenia, where he sits down at the table in his new room and writes a text. It is about the cosmonauts who never made it into space, the heroes and at the same time losers of history, whom no one remembers because the concept of identity has failed.

The text is thoughtful, poetic, too raw, too refined, too absurd, and a very peculiar work of art. It is an attempt to reinvent reality in a world turned upside down. 

But is that possible?

Plotinikov, now thirty years old, is bringing his play, which is not really a play, to Basel in a production that is not really a production.