Based on the novel Roadside Picnic
Authors: Boris a Arkadij Strugackí
Screenplay and direction: Ondrej Spišák
Stage: Karel Czech
Costumes: Katarína Hollá
Technical cooperation: Radoslav Šabík
Production: Jana Suraová
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes
Auditorium capacity: max 80 spectators
Starring: Milan Ondrík, Peter Oszlík, Agáta Spišáková, Zuzana Konečná, Milan Vojtela, Vít Bednárik, Ondrej Spišák, Šimon Spišák, Filip Vojtela, Krištof Barát, Samo Šabík, Michal Záhradníček
Is there anything that can save our Earth?
How do the drugs to cure cancer work?
If the mankind is a cancer cell in the body of the universe, then it must be removed… or its proliferation needs to be stopped… or we need to change what is sick into something healthy – to heal.
A sphere that appeared out of the blue is the cure. It wasn’t easy to get it here. It’s like radiation or chemotherapy. Its effect is redeemed by a number of side effects. A burnt and radioactive piece of land… and the wish-granting sphere in it. And the hope of the doctor who prescribed this sphere as a drug… The hope that it will have a positive effect on the depressed mankind which will turn into a positive and healthy organism. Confident, capable of being a healthy part of the cosmic body… However, it may as well turn out that the mankind won’t be able to use this magical cure and save itself and this magical cure will just speed up the destruction and the mankind will eventually destroy itself… Both options are good for the universe.
Our Stalker is a theatrical adaptation of the famous novel Roadside Picnic, which was written by two of the most popular science fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The story takes place somewhere in the West, in the area near a town visited by an extra-terrestrial civilization. This location is called the Zone. The Zone exhibits strange physical anomalies, setting deadly traps for the visitors and it contains artifacts with supernatural properties. The remains of the alien Visitation are of interest not only to the employees of the International Institute for Extra-terrestrial Cultures but also to the stalkers – people who, risking their lives, break the prohibition and enter the Zone at night, recover the artifacts from within the Zone and sell them to the dealers. The object of the greatest desire is a strange sphere which is rumoured to have the power to make those most secret wishes come true. The heroes in Stalker live in the atmosphere of the decaying world and yet they feel that there is something, a message left to us by someone to help us arrest the fall and solve all the problems. However, who knows what a person will do once they approach the shining sphere to make their wish and then they realize that the sphere grants the secret wishes, not those verbally expressed? Won’t these wishes scare them? Won’t they get scared of themselves? In our adaptation of Stalker we will think together about the basic philosophical questions in the context of existing reality – in the frame of our particular contemporary life.
