[8] The second stage of Maly, located in Zamoskvorechye District, also performs plays by W. Somerset Maugham, Luigi Pirandello and Eugene Scribe.

[8] Maly had a long tradition of producing William Shakespeare but, as of 2009, performs only one Shakespearian play, Love's Labour's Lost on its second stage.

[9] The ukaz was largely targeting Saint Petersburg—then devoid of any public entertainment—and specifically instructed that actors be recruited from Fyodor Volkov's company, which had already relocated from Yaroslavl to the capital.

[9] Rector Ivan Shuvalov planned to build the University's own theatre hall, but later made an agreement with Italian impresario Giovanni Battista Locatelli, who managed the Opera House at the Red Gates.

[9] Locatelli opera, established in the beginning of 1759, was suffering financially, and the impoverished impresario willfully shared his stage with Shuvalov's company.

[9] Plays by Molière, Kheraskov, Rousseau were a success with Moscow audiences, but the death of Elisabeth in 1762, the subsequent twelve-month official mourning, and Shuvalov's retirement killed the theatre, and the company dispersed.

[9] In five months,[9] Maddox built and outfitted a three-storey stone theatre on the same site; the premiere, Wanderers by A. O. Ablesimov, ran on December 30, 1780.

[9][13] The new company officially premiered April 11, 1808, at the Pashkov House with a double act of Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni and Poverty and Chivalry by August von Kotzebue.

Joseph Bove designed a grand opera theatre (the future Bolshoy) on the site of former Petrovsky with four identical buildings around it.

[9] In the same year, future stars Mikhail Shchepkin and Pavel Mochalov joined the company, immediately receiving top billings.

For example, the January 31, 1828 night at Bolshoy stage for the benefit of Mikhail Shchepkin featured The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller, a single-act French opera, and a "vaudeville ballet by Alexander Shakhovskoy in rhyme and free verse with machines, flooding of the entire theatre, diverse dancing and music compiled from folk songs".

Maly performances included works by Vasily Zhukovsky, Alexander Griboyedov (Woe from Wit 1831 featuring both Shchepkin and Pavel Mochalov).

[23] In 1849 former court clerk and university dropout Alexander Ostrovsky wrote It's a Family Affair, a play that was banned by state censorship.

[24][26] As a manager, Ostrovsky formed lasting relationships with the cast, campaigned for professional stage training, and even conducted statistical surveys of the audience.

[29] Other Russian authors who wrote for Maly were Ivan Turgenev (A Provincial Lady, 1851 and A Month in the Country, 1872),[30][31] Aleksey Pisemsky (two plays that premiered in 1866 and 1875),[32] and Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin (Scenes from the Past, 1854–1869).

[33] In 1878 young Anton Chekhov wrote his first large-scale drama Platonov[34] specifically for Maria Yermolova, but she rejected the play and it was not published until 1923.

[35] The Miserly Knight by Alexander Pushkin premiered in Maly posthumously in January 1853, three months later than in Saint Petersburg's Alexandrinsky Theatre.

[37] The last quarter of the 19th century, coincident with Ostrovsky's brief tenure at Maly, brought forward the new generation of lead actors that "could be described as a constellation of great personalities".

[40][41] Yermolova played The Maid of Orleans, her greatest success,[41] for 18 years (1884–1902);[41] In 1894, the show moved onto Bolshoy stage to maximize revenue.

According to Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, "demonically hard working" Yuzhin "filled every step with energy, persistence, and determination",[43] and expressed the same qualities in his own plays.

Instead of relying on professional directors, the star cast of Yuzhin, Yermolova, Mikhail Sadovsky, Alexander Lensky, and others collectively directed their own shows.

In the 1920s, Maly was unconditionally ruled by directors Nikolay Volkonsky, Ivan Platon, Lev Prozorovsky, and CEO Vladimir Vladimirov, who replaced ailing Yuzhin in 1926.

Sergey Radlov produced Othello (December 1935) starring deaf Alexander Ostuzhev, and the play became a breakthrough for the theatre and the actor.

[46] His stage partner Boris Babochkin, another vagrant director and the star of Chapaev, directed and played at Maly for the last two decades of his life.

[47] During Khrushchev Thaw, Maly had its spark of novelty, starting with the 1956 production of The Power of Darkness directed by Boris Ravenskikh and starring Igor Ilyinsky, who was personally torn between allegiance to communist ideology and Leo Tolstoy's ideas.

It even became an "exile" for once independent directors Boris Lvov-Anokhin and Leonid Kheyfets,[49] a place deemed "safe enough" to produce a stage version of Brezhnev's trilogy.

[8] Maly Theatre, facing Petrovka Street, is the last remaining of four identical buildings erected in the 1820s by Joseph Bove for private customers.

It performs a larger share of plays by foreign authors, currently (2009–2010 season) William Shakespeare, W. Somerset Maugham, Luigi Pirandello and Eugene Scribe.