The Deutsche Gebietstheater Dnjepropetrowsk (German Regional Theatre Dnjepropetrowsk) was founded in 1935 at the encouragement of the culturally-interested politician Mendel Chatajewitsch in Dnjepropetrowsk, a Ukrainian industrial town between Kiev and Odessa. In this region there was a population descended from German immigrants who had never experienced German theatre before.

The ensemble was composed exclusively of emigrants. The Internationale Revolutionäre Theatrebund (IRTB, International Revolutionary Theatre Association) summoned as artistic manager the director Maxim Vallentin, who until 1933 had supervised the amateur theatre group Das Rote Sprachrohr (The Red Megaphone) in Berlin, from his exile in Prague. For a short time the actress Mischket Liebermann was director. She had performed at the Reinhardtbühne theatre in Berlin and, since 1929, in the Jewish Theatre of the Belarusian town Minsk.

The photograph shows members of the ensemble, to which the actors Erwin Geschonneck, Hermann Greid, Curt Trepte, Friedrich Richter and Emmi (Amy) Frank, the dancer Edith Vallentin, and the costume designer Sylta Busse belonged. They had at their disposal winter quarters with a rehearsal stage in Dnjepropetrowsk. In spring and summer, however, they became a travelling group. With a three-tonne truck they transported decorations, and even the stage itself was easily (dis)assembled. During the harvest they performed in the daytime for the field camps of collective farms, at night in villages and small towns.

Despite difficult working conditions, the artists found their year in the group to be a happy time. In July 1936, however, following domestic developments in the Soviet Union, state funding was stopped and the group disbanded.