The biography of Donetsk State Music and Drama Theatre (the Theatre, for short) started in 1927 when it was created as a Ukrainian worker's theatre, in Chernozavodsky District of the city of Kharkov (then the capital of Ukraine); the Theatre had a mission to bring culture and education to eastern Ukraine. The core of the Theatre's company was made up by actors of Kharkov State People's Theatre and of the famous Berezil Theatre. The first head art director of the Theatre was the famous stage director Aleksandr Zagarov, a student of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko; in a year, he was replaced by a student of Les Kurbas, the outstanding stage director Vasily Vasilko who would later receive the title of the People's Artist of Ukraine.
In 1930, as part of the All-USSR Art Competition, the Theatre's company went on tour to Moscow, the Theatre being only one of the two participants from Ukraine.
In 1933, at the suggestion of the People's Commissariat (Ministry) for Education of Ukraine, the company, which was already quite mature at that time, was transferred to the city of Donetsk (then known as Stalino); the first season at the new location was opened on 7th November 1933 with the premiere of Ivan Mikitenko's drama Notre Dame de la Bastille.
The Theatre became the Donbass region's leading company and one of Ukraine's best theatres; all this was to a significant extent due to the originality and variety of the Theatre's repertoire and to its creative team's originality and high general level of culture.
At the time, the core of the company consisted of Lyubov Gakkebush, G. Chayka, M. Ilchenko, R. Chalichenko, S. Levchenko, Yu. Rozumovskaya, G. Petrovskaya, Viktor Dobrovolsky, Ye. Chupilko, I. Savuskan, V. Gripak, O. Vorontsov, K. Yevtimovich, Ye. Vinnikov, Daniil Lazurenko, Viktor Dovbishchenko as well as of the future stage directors Nikolay Smirnov, P. Kovtunenko, and Valery Gakkebush, students of Vasilko.
The best productions of the period were those of Ivan Kocherga's Marco in Hell and Song About A Cricket, Boris Lavrenyov's Story of A Simple Thing (staged as Leon Couturier), Taras Shevchenko's Haidamaks (staged by Kurbas), Mikitenko's Dictatorship, William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Maxim Gorky's Vassa Zheleznova and Aleksandr Korneychuk's Platon Krechet. It was in the Donbass region that the Theatre's repertoire first included musicals, from the folk opera Natalka Poltavka (based on the play by Ivan Kotlyarevsky) to the tragedy Boris Godunov (based on the play by Aleksandr Pushkin).
For the first 10 years of its creative activity, the Theatre had visited not only large cities of Donbass (Voroshilovgrad (now Lugansk), Mariupol, Gorlovka, Artyomovsk, Makeyevka and Slavyansk), but also other cities of the USSR such as Baku (Azerbaijan); Minsk, Vitebsk, Gomel, Mogilyov (Belarus); Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), Rostov-on-Don (Russia); and Kiev (Ukraine).
The Nazi invasion during the Second World War interrupted the work of the Theatre. The Theatre was not evacuated completely: most of the company joined the acting army. After having merged with the remains of the Artyomovsk Theatre's company, a small group of the Theatre's actors was evacuated to the city of Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan.
On 11th October 1941, the first performance of the restored Artyom Theatre of Musical Comedy and Drama was held. Another, a somewhat larger group, while on their way to Central Asia, merged with Gorlovka Theatre and later worked in the city of Jallalabat, Kyrgyzstan, under the name of Stalino Drama Theatre.
After the Donbass region had been liberated, both the companies came back to Donetsk, in January and March 1944, respectively. The final version of the company of Stalino Artyom State Ukrainian Musical and Drama Theatre (as the Theatre was then known) had been shaped. At the time, the company's core was made up by such experienced masters of the stage as S. Kokhanny, I. Korzh, P. Polevaya, K. Datsenko, K. Ryabtsev, T. Kuzhel; by such stage directors as L. Yuzhansky and Valery Gakkebush; and by such talented young actors as V. Zagayevsky, M. Adamskaya, M. Protasenko, Kh. Negrimovsky, Yu. Galinsky, L. Usatenko and A. Malich. Later, the company was enlarged by such talented actors as N. Kharchenko, T. Avdiyenko, A. Bobina, M. Bondarenko, I. Moloshnikov, A. Akimov, A. Burlyuk, G. Gorshkov, N. Kramar, M. Gladnev, N. Krutyuk, Ye. Vorobyeva, Ye. Kolodko and others.
For a long time, having no building of its own, the Theatre used rooms of Donetsk Musical Theatre (which since 1947 has been known as Donetsk Opera and Ballet Theatre). In 1961, the company received its own home and once and for all "registered" at 74A Artyoma Street.
Today, the Theatre is one of the most influential theatre companies not only in Ukraine's south-east, but in the entire country. In 2003, the Theatre's company won a creative victory when they received the Shevchenko National Prize for their production of Kotlyarevsky's The Aeneid. Specifically, the prize was received by Ukraine's Meritorious Worker of Culture Viktor Shulakov, the stage director of the production, and Ukraine's Meritorious Worker of Culture Mark Brovun, the Theatre's head art director and its general manager.
The Theatre conceived the idea of the Theatre Donbass Festival and the Golden Key Festival, regional theatre festivals. Productions of the Theatre have won awards at two all-Ukrainian festivals, The Melpomene of Taurida and A Government Inspector is Coming. For a significant contribution to the development of the region's culture, the company of the Theatre was awarded with a diploma and a commemorative souvenir at the 1997 Golden Scythian International Festival, while in 2000 it received the honorary certificate of the Golden Scythian Foundation, a charity foundation for development and promotion of the Donbass region.
In 2005, the redesign works on the Theatre's building and the adjacent territory improvement works were completed; during these works, the company continued its creative activities.
On 28th September 2001, for the outstanding achievements in the area of developing Ukrainian theatre art, the Theatre received the honorary status of an academy theatre; it was for the first time in the history of the independent Ukraine that a theatre received this status.
On 26th November 2009, as part of the government's efforts to support and develop Ukrainian theatre art, the Theatre, as a theatre that had made a significant contribution promoting Ukrainian culture, became the first theatre among Ukraine's musical and drama theatres to receive the status of a national theatre.
A statue of Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, decorates the pediment of the Theatre; the statue is Donetsk's largest pediment statue. It is 11.5 feet (3.5 meter) high (the height was calculated based on the proportions of the entire architectural ensemble of the Theatre) and it weighs around 2.200 pounds (one tonne). The author of the statue is the sculptor Yury Baldin. Cast of bronze, the statue was erected on 14th March 2005.
The Theatre's architectural design developed in 1958 included a pediment statue. However, the Theatre was constructed in 1961 without the statue, though with a pedestal for it.
It was a period when decorative elements were being removed from building designs; the reason for that was a decree (issued in 1955 by the Central Committee of the USSR Communist Party and by the USSR Council of Ministers (the government)) that ordered elimination of "superfluities" from design and construction. As the decree put it: "Soviet architecture must be characterised by simplicity, by strictness of form and by efficient solutions."
During the Theatre's redesign done in the 2000s, it was decided to place a statue on the pediment. Since the design documents had not preserved information on what statue was supposed to be placed, a new image was selected. The image was Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy in Ancient Greek mythology.
The classical Melpomene is depicted having a wreath of vines or grapes on her head, dressed in a theatre robe and holding a theatre mask of tragedy in one hand and a club or a sword in another. Nevertheless, the Theatre's Melpomene does not have any of the traditional attributes. Instead, she is depicted holding a palm branch in her hands.
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