Theatre organisations

The Estonian Theatre and Music Museum (TMM) is located in Tallinn Old Town at the address Müürivahe 12 in a building connected to the historical City Wall and Assauwe Defence Tower. The Museum has a music and theatre department, music and theatre libraries, also a music sheet collection and a sound archive.

The beginnings of the Museum are connected to a movement to collect the heritage of composer and organist Peeter Süda in 1924. The Museum’s theatre collections are based on the heritage of the actor Heino Vaks, used to establish the Theatre Museum Society in 1937, which was merged with the Music Museum Society in 1941. The last big merger took place in 2019, when two public agencies, the Estonian Theatre and Music Museum and the Estonian History Museum, merged into the Estonian History Museum Foundation.

There are over 700 theatre and personal collections in the Museum’s theatre collection. Playbills, photos, scripts provide an excellent overview of the development and current state of Estonian theatres. The Museum’s art collection includes outstanding scenographers’ set design models, costume and decoration plans and humorous caricatures. The library holds diverse theatre and music literature and the collections of plays of several Estonian theatres. Newspaper clippings of all Estonian theatres’ productions since 1960 up until 2007, and in digital format from then on. The photo collection of the Estonian Theatre and Music Museum is divided into collections of negatives, paper photos and digital photos.

The permanent exhibition (on approximately 200 square metres), library and reading hall are in the Old Town of Tallinn, at Müürivahe 12. In addition, the Museum has another establishment, the only single-artist museum dedicated to a theatre professional in Estonia, the Särevi Teatrituba / Särevi Theatre Room (Tina 23-13, Tallinn, Tel +372 5556 6686).

Popular music heritage is introduced with an exhibition in the Estonian History Museum Maarjamäe Palace’s stable (Pirita tee 56, Tallinn).