The paper examines the creative history of the play Psisha by Yuri Belyaev – a theatre critic, fi ction writer and dramatist of the Silver Age. While working on the article cycle A night at “The Opera House” about theatre history of the times of Catherine II, the critic researched historical sources: periodical, fi ction, documents of the second half of the 18th – early 19th centuries. There Belyaev must have found the material for his early fi ctional experience – the historical short story Psisha. Among the characters of the story were a landowner – аn avid theatergoer, and the actors of his serf company. In this story the set of themes is defi ned, which the writer will develop further in his later works: the court and the serf theatres, the repertoire, the tragic fate of dependent actors. Later Belyaev addressed the theme of the serf theater as a dramatist and his artistic pursuits resulted in the play Psisha. The stage version had a great audience success in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 1911–1912 theatrical season and was highly appreciated by theater observers in newspapers and journals. Judging by the reviews in the periodical press, the author of Psisha managed to strike the right balance between stylizations that became relevant during this period, the recreation of everyday scenes of the era and a sentimental psychological drama from the life of serf actors. Thus, it was possible to establish that Belyaev’s fi rst works on the history of the Russian theater and his fi rst literary works shaped the main themes and images of one of his most famous dramas.