After the First World War, in addition to the professional National Theatre in Belgrade, there were also several dilettante theatre groups whose actors were high school and university students. The repertoire of these groups consisted mainly of comedies with which they toured the entire country. A group of students from Belgrade University, including Mata Milošević, Milan Dedinac, Aleksandar Janković, Milenko Živković, Draga Novaković, Dragomir Plaović and Svetozar Popović, met in the restaurant of the Moskva Hotel on September 15, 1922 and decided to found an academic theatre under the auspices of the University.
At that time, the Art Theatre from Moscow was visiting Belgrade, so the director Yuri Rakitin, who had previously worked at the National Theatre, was asked by academics to do the first performance in the new, Academic Theatre. Rakitin agreed, and rehearsals for Chekhov’s “The Seagull” began immediately, which had its premiere on April 3, 1923, in the hall of the former Manjež. One of the leading roles, Treplev, was played by Mata Milošević. The academic theatre, with short interruptions, also worked during the Second World War, and immediately after the liberation, it continued its work within the framework of the “Branko Krsmanović” Academic Cultural and Art Society, under the auspices of the University of Belgrade.
