Viktor Ryzhakov heads the Sovremennik Theater after the death of Galina Volchek, who led the troupe for almost half a century and enjoyed absolute authority. For the first production in the theater, the new artistic director chooses a play about a family whose members have ceased to understand each other. While working on a play, the director and actors become more and more like the characters of the future performance. They also find it difficult to find mutual understanding within their "theatrical family".

A film director arrives at a maximum-security penal colony to shoot a documentary about a squad leader who works with prisoners. The manager however, believes that it is not worth showing the daily life of the colony as it actually is and proceeds to shoot staged scenes, which he directs himself. The author of the film patiently records how this movie is shot, but real life still manages to break into the production.

Two indigenous residents of St. Petersburg accidentally meet on the Fontanka embankment and begin to remember the city of their childhood.

Novorzhev is a small town in the Pskov region. After six in the evening, its streets are empty, and it seems that life in this place has stopped. But it boils in the House of Culture, where local residents are rehearsing a play based on a play by a Spanish playwright. The main characters poison each other with poison, try to shoot their relatives, die, writhing from convulsions, and at some point it is no longer clear where life is and where the theater is.