How free and free are we to define our destiny and identity? What can we oppose as an experience and as a way of life to today's folding of values, to the increasing conservatization of Western society? With such questions, the show looks back to the novel “What to do?” (1863) by the Russian philosopher and writer Nikolai Chernyshevsky. Starting with the story of Vera—at the crossroads between Georgia Sandys heroines and Charles Fourier's utopian socialism—and through a charming plot that transforms the impasse into a realized utopia, the play explores the dilemma nature of love and connects it to the wider better moral attitude of everyone and their choices in the social sphere and in the family. Not aspiring to a faithful theatrical transfer of the play — an undertaking prevented by monumental dimensions but also by radical differences from its time —, the show draws inspiration and material from Chernyshevsky's novel to engage with today's viewer and challenge today's society “dead ends”, which are still based on timeless, patriarchal stereotypes. With an emphasis on the use of real time video, which is also the main medium of narration, theatrical language is used when and when cinematic: the four actors “shoot” selected scenes with the final image composing “period” cinematic snapshots with vivid speech. Attempting to capture the erotic, existential and political dimensions that intersect in a difficult path of female emancipation, the stage work articulates a present-day “what to do?”, who and who we are, who and who we want to be, through a personal and experiential perspective.