This is a film about a traveling theatrical group in the beginning of 20th century. The itinerant troupe arrives in the little town, comprising several families, an eccentric student, an anarchist, all united by their love for theatre. The theatricals of 'Othello' are pending. All of a sudden, the performer of Desdemona falls ill. The local woman teacher plays in her stead. She makes a success and joins the troupe. The young woman travels with them along the dusty country roads and never gives up. Step by step she becomes a very good actress and assumes the leading of the group through its complex life. United by their common fate, the actors go through the joys and disappointments of their pioneering educative mission together. They stay at seedy hotels, sleep in the open, play on makeshift stages and in splendid halls and wherever they go they come across wealth and poverty, glory and humiliation, funny and sad adventures. This chronicle of a theatre company is, in fact, a parable about the theatre and actors - a parable about a choice that is more likely to bring the tears to the eyes than stars to the hair of those who have made it. This is also a story about several personal dramas of love and jealousy, about the rise of a rank amateur to a leading lady, and the fall of an old pro to shameful compromises. When at long last the traveling company becomes a state-owned theatre, but with a fixes repertoire arrived at by compromise, it falls apart. Those who have become tired of the struggle chose the security they are offered; those who wish to remain true to art go back to the dusty road.