The museum sits on a street named after a 1921 revolution hero. The building’s wide eaves and carved wooden doors match the ones you see on Ulaanbaatar’s older temples. Inside, the air smells of aged paper and wool.
It opened in 1957. Theatre was already part of public life: nomadic families gathered around fires to watch masked dancers reenact the deeds of Genghis Khan, while urban audiences filled the State Academic Theatre for new plays about industrialization. The museum collected the props, scripts, and photographs that survived.
Start at the first case. A shaman’s drum, its leather stretched over birch, rests beside a 1930s playbill for “The Three Hills,” the first Mongolian opera. Next, masks: a blue-faced deity with gilded horns, a fox spirit whose snout still holds traces of red ochre. The labels explain that actors once fasted for three days before wearing them, believing the masks carried the spirits they represented.
Costumes hang on mannequins. A silk deel embroidered with silver thread weighs less than a winter coat but took six months to stitch. A wolf-fur headdress sheds hairs onto the glass. One tag reads: “Worn by D. Dashdulam in ‘The Secret History of the Mongols,’ 1962.”
The 1940s brought Soviet advisors. They introduced proscenium arches and realistic sets. The museum displays a miniature model of the original State Theatre stage, complete with a painted backdrop of the steppe that could be rolled up and transported by camel. Black-and-white photographs show actors in Western suits performing Chekhov, their faces half-lit by kerosene lamps.
Turn a corner and the timeline jumps. A flatscreen plays a 2018 production of “The Horse-Head Fiddle’s Lament,” where actors in modern dress interact with shadow puppets. Beside it, a touchscreen lets you swipe through drafts of the script, each page scribbled with notes in Cyrillic and Mongolian script. A director’s voice, recorded in 2022, explains why she set the play in a yurt made of plastic bottles: “Because the steppe is drowning in trash, and theatre should say that.”
On weekends, the museum runs workshops. Last month, a mask-carving session used linden wood; the instructor showed how to hollow the back so the actor’s voice would resonate. Upstairs, a rehearsal space has mirrors that reflect the city’s skyline through tall windows. Sometimes you can hear actors warming up, their voices bouncing off the high ceiling.
The gift shop sells postcards of famous performances and small felt puppets of the fox spirit. A sign invites visitors to leave their own stories: “What play changed you?” The answers are pinned to a board—some in Mongolian, some in English, some in Chinese characters.
The last case holds a single object: a 1990s cassette tape labeled “Demo – New Voices.” The museum’s curator, when asked, says it contains songs from the first post-Soviet rock musical. No one has digitized it yet.
