Natalia Sats Theater
The theater for children and youth named after Natalia Sats, giving performances in Russian, leads its history from the Alma-Ata Theater of Young Spectators. The main initiator and first director of the theater was the famous theater figure Natalia Ilyinichna Sats, who was in exile in Alma-Ata. On September 6, 1944, the decree “On the organization of a theater for young spectators in the city of Almaty” was issued. This date is the beginning of the formation of children’s acting and the development of creativity in the city of Almaty and the entire Kazakh SSR as a whole. On a festive morning on November 7, 1945, the theater presented its first performances to the Almaty people: in the morning the Little Red Riding Hood by E. Schwartz was staged by N.I. Sats, and in the evening Siege of Leiden by Isidor Stock directed by the famous playwright and director Victor Rozov. A theater studio was also created in which Natalia Ilyinichna Sats prepared theater shots. The performances were put in Russian; in 1946, the first Kazakh group of actors was founded. The main repertoire consisted of works of the Russian and foreign playwrights in Russian.
Division into two independent teams
In 1985, by the Decree of the Ministry of Culture of the Kazakh SSR of February 24, the Theater for Children and Youth of Kazakhstan was divided into two independent groups: Russian, which was named after Natalia Sats in 1995 and Kazakh, which received the name of the famous Kazakh writer and playwright Gabit Musrepov. For some time both groups were in the same building, alternating rehearsals and performances. Then the Russian Youth Theater received a separate building. In 1996, the N. Sats Theater of the Young Spectator was awarded the honorary title of Academic. The building was built in 1981 by the project of architects A.A. Petrova, Z.M. Mustafina and G.S. Dzhakipova, engineers G.I. Stulova, G.I. Nikitin and V. Tverdokhlebov. Initially, it was intended to be in the Palace of Culture of the Almaty Cotton Mill.
