Around the turn of the 20^th century, a small group of Buryat (indigenous Siberian) intellectuals and students began staging plays in their native language. What began as passionate practice among the literate young soon turned into a regional movement, with theater groups springing up from Irkutsk to Chita, from Lake Baikal to Northern Mongolia. In a context of bloody civil war, economic hardship, and political upheaval, theater became one of the central means of expression and discourse for Buryats, whose lives, ideas, and aesthetics were reflected in early theater performances. Amateur playwrights crafted dozens of plays, though they lacked a common literary language and alphabet. Even as the Soviets gained power in the 1920s, grassroots theater continued to shape Buryat lives and letters until it was co-opted by the new regime, dominating the burgeoning club scene and elite and popular debates about the future of Buryat art.

The plays and accounts of performances that survived this era point to little explored aspects of Buryat society at the time and reveal a uniquely Buryat perspective on the events affecting Siberia, addressing issues from the dangers of drink to the importance of education and literacy, from corrupt Buddhist lamas to the future of the Buryat people. These documents and stories tell of a struggle to posit a new kind of Buryat identity, one powerfully influenced by Russian notions about “native” Siberians, European Romantic Nationalism, the aesthetics of the Mongol world, and local custom and rhetoric.