[4] In October 1918, she established one of the world's first dedicated theatres for children using professional performers, on Manonovsky Alley, Moscow.
[4] The original Director of the First Children's Theatre, Henriette Pascar refused to accept the political demands placed on the theatre, and was sacked in 1923, after putting on a stage version of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson in which the British flag was raised on stage, and a toast drunk to the King.
She directed her first play in 1925, in the same year that she married the head of the Moscow soviet's finance department, Nikolai Popov, by whom she had a daughter, Roxana.
In 1931 conductor Otto Klemperer invited her to stage Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro in Buenos Aires, and Verdi's Falstaff in Berlin.
One of the first works she commissioned in this role was the Golden Key, by Alexei Tolstoy, which featured the puppet Buratino, who resembled Pinochio.
She wished to produce a play which would introduce children to the instruments of the orchestra, and she persuaded Prokofiev to compose Peter and the Wolf and worked closely with him on its creation, contributing many ideas to the libretto.
[4] including a report that she was accused of being a "family member of a traitor to the Motherland", as the wife of Israel Veitser.
[2] At the end of her five years of hard labor, she was not allowed to return to Moscow, but was exiled to Alma-Ata (now Almaty, Kazakhstan).
There, in 1944, Sats wrote to the Central Committee about the necessity of a theater for children and young people in the city.
A resolution of the Council of People's Commissars and Central Committee of Communist Party of Kazakhstan “On organization of the theater of young spectators in Alma-Ata” was adopted on September 6, 1944.
In addition to working as a playwright, director and producer, Sats wrote three books, including an autobiography Sketches from My Life,[1] which was translated into English in 1985.
[13][14] On September 14, 2023, a memorial plaque was unveiled in Almaty in connection with the 120th anniversary of the birth of Natalya Sats.