Stalker Inspires Vanya

Watery sunlight seeps through dirty windows in the murky barroom. Plaster flakes off the walls, revealing bald patches. The walls exude the smell of cheap whiskey and stale cigarettes. The dark wood of the bar gleams, watched over by the silent bartender. A row of bottles before a bright mirror winks shards of light into the gloom.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker (1979) follows the physical, mental, and spiritual journeys of three men, the Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor. The barroom, a graveyard of the past, holds ghosts of conversations and serves as a waiting room for the present, a place for the three men to prepare for the perilous journey ahead. The Stalker, a man tortured by his own restlessness, is pursuer and pursued. He cannot settle into his own life, cannot feel at ease in his own skin. So he leads people deep into the heart of the ZONE, to the Room, an inner chamber where one receives one’s deepest desire. The ZONE, a heavily guarded wasteland, is the site at which an alleged meteorite fell to earth and eliminated all human presence, filling the area with supernatural forces. Remnants of vanished lives remain – rusted out cars, crumbling walls, keys, and pictures caught in the tangle of weeds. Here the Stalker comes alive, in this landscape of the submerged past. He struggles to overcome the self-image the world has thrust upon him, the image of a failed man. As a Stalker he leads people to the Room to attain their wishes, but he chooses never to enter. Only here, in this ruined, otherworldly landscape, can he grasp his destiny: self-sacrifice.

Uncle Vanya‘s title character proclaims himself a failure and has it confirmed by Serebyakov, Astrov and Yelena. He desperately grasps at love, only to be rebuffed each time. He longs for control only to realize that he is the one who is controlled. Like the Stalker, he constantly serves others. He keeps the farm running to support Serebyakov and Yelena. Then as self-awareness seeps in, he regrets his wasted life. He believes time has tricked him, leaving him too old to fulfill any dreams. As he navigates the littered terrain of his life–bitter disillusionment and deep longing–he relentlessly reaches out to the future, not knowing whether to stretch out an open or a closed hand.

The barroom of Stalker inspired the set for the A.R.T.’s production of Uncle Vanya. Like the film, Riccardo Hernandez’s set suggests a place of suspended time, a place of waiting. For both the Stalker and Vanya, their lives are not what they want. They are unhappy and restless, affecting others around them. However, their increasing self-awareness helps them to realize the small lives they inhabit. They yearn for something larger than themselves, something transcendent. Yet they are constrained by the image of failure that haunts them, unable to shake loose from it. In the end, they are suspended between a dead past and a future impossible to imagine.

Barbara Whitney is a first-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training.