Putting aside all their planned summer activities, the Pioneer group spends entire days playing ball in the courtyard and on the street. This upsets the building’s residents the most. A scandal is brewing, and there’s only one solution: build a children’s stadium.

A funny comedy about a kindergarten manager who tries to make all the preparations before the start of a school year.

The play, traditionally considered a precursor to Uncle Vanya, contains many characters, situations, and fragments of text that were later carried over into Uncle Vanya from The Wood Demon. In this play, as in all of Chekhov's works, the characteristics of the Russian national character are reflected. Nature and man are interconnected: man first cleared the forest, and then civilization cleared man. Spiritual values have been lost, traditions destroyed, and the ability to empathize and feel for others has vanished.

Based on the eponymous novel by É. Zola, directed by the State Academic Theatre named after Evgeny Vakhtangov.