[4] Ruska Besida ("Ruthenian conversation") was a society, which arranged literary, musical and dance evenings, concerts, balls and lectures.

[6] Kost Levytskyi wrote: "Actors of rank and students hurried to join the theatre, to devote themselves to the development of their native drama".

The theatre put on vaudeville, melodrama, operetta, translated pieces of Western European playwrights, and performed their own Ukrainian dramatists.

The writings of Nikolai Gogol were performed, as well as of the Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov; the work of Polish playwrights Aleksander Fredro and Stanisław Przybyszewski also graced their stage.

Besides the Ukrainian operas of Mykola Lysenko and Mykola Arkas, Ukrainians were introduced for the first time to such operas as: La Juive by Fromental Halévy, Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini, Carmen by Georges Bizet, La traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, Faust by Charles Gounod, The Tales of Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach, Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, The Bartered Bride by Bedřich Smetana, Halka by Stanisław Moniuszko, and others.