The article deals with the methodological approaches in the study of the history of the youth amateur theatre. The author analyses the issue of establishment and development of the forms and methods of the drama work with children and teenagers from the point of history and culture development. The phenomenological, socio-cultural and anthropological approaches are under consideration.

There is substantiated the urgency of history study of the issue of school amateur theatres establishment in Russia as the educational means. There is analyzed the pre-revolutionary stage of establishment and development of school theatre pedagogy in Russia. As the illustration there is described the historical experience of such pedagogues as N.N. Bakhtin, N.F. Bunakov, I.I. Betskoy, N.A. Rachinsky.