The Training Theater sits in the house that once belonged to a first-guild merchant Alexander Kostromin, who was also the patron of the self-taught mechanic and inventor Ivan Kulibin. Over time, the building has changed hands many times — after the Russian Revolution of 1917, for example, it housed a shop and communal apartments, in 1954 a puppet theater moved in.

Today the building is taken by the Training Theater of the Nizhny Novgorod Theater School named after Yevgeny Yevstigneyev, a prominent stage and film actor and a native of Nizhny Novgorod. Its stage hosts graduation performances, masterclasses and meetings with alumni actors and directors.

Here, the directors of Nizhny Novgorod theaters who also teach at the Theater School, stage performances based on works by Jerome Salinger, Nikolai Gogol, Alexander Ostrovsky, Nikolay Nosov and other classical and modern writers. Such performances feature only young aspiring actors.