By day, Lera is a seemingly innocuous sociology student, entranced by and hoping to discover the meaning and purpose of the human soul. But at night, she dances at a local strip club under the stage name Gerda in an effort to support herself and her ailing mother. As Lera ventures further into the darkest corners of the human psyche, her own academic curiosity begins to meld with the hard-living reality of her stage persona, merging both Lera and Gerda into a force of nature that just may discover what it means to truly be ‘human.’