The first Drama Theater in Novgorod was founded in 1853. The company changed its premises and name several times until it moved to a new, monumental building in the Soviet Art Nouveau style in 1987. Local residents nicknamed the Novgorod Drama Theatre the “alien ship”, which landed on the bank of the Volkhov. Its auditorium holds 850 people and is equipped at a state-of-the-art level.
The Drama Theater of Novgorod has mostly classical works of domestic and foreign drama on its repertoire. In the late nineties the Novgorod Theater was given the name of the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, who had been living and working in the vicinity of Veliky Novgorod in the estate of Staraya Russa for some time. Previously, the architectural ensemble of the theater included a 42-meter column. Residents nicknamed it a column of self-murderers, since the height and accessibility of this structure attracted those who decided to take their own lives. It is for this reason that the column was dismantled in 2009.