TEATER SASTRA UI was founded by I. Yudhi Soenarto when he was still an English major in the Faculty of Letters Universitas Indonesia (at that time the university was in Rawamangun. Now, its name and place changed to Faculty of Humanities in Depok). With ‘guerrilla’ training method, using every space available in the university, Teater Sastra UI performed their first production: Eugene O'Neill's Paus (The Lie), in April 1985. Since that time, Teater Sastra UI has been known as a ‘learning theater’. A learning theater is a theater that does not only aimed at satisfying the desire to perform, but also to study theater and its discipline deeper, without being limited by style, genre, school, tradition and non-tradition, realism and absurd, also experimental and non-experimental. Until now, Teater Sastra UI has gone through several phases.The first phase was a time of struggle. Human resources with high-spirited hardworking attitude were available yet still insufficient to make a well-established theater.

However, the struggle did not come to stagnation. This first period was filled with performances of various works of self-written plays and international dramatists’ plays: Tiang Gantungan (I. Yudhi Soenarto, 1986), Sosok-sosok (I. Yudhi Soenarto, 1987), Jeruji (I.Yudhi Soenarto), Tragedi OthelloRumah Pinggiran (Sam Shepard, 1991), etc. All those plays were performed in cultural centers in Jakarta and Bandung. In its second phase, since 1989, Teater Sastra UI performed experimental plays such as Prokossokampress (1989), Ambhrosoerokihl (1990), JGERR (1993) and Jamprass (1993).

These performances were using non-verbal language aiming at liberating the audience from the tyranny of words. The third phase, Teater Sastra UI once again performing the works of international dramatist such as Orang Baik dari Setzuan (Bertold Brecht), in 1998-1999, and Guci Yang Pecah (Heinrich von Kleist) in 2000, 2001, and 2002. In this phase, Teater Sastra UI also started to increase the performances of Lenong (traditionally improvised comedy) and satire comedy. This phase brought Teater Sastra UI to be a well-established university-based theater. (W. Shakespeare, 1988),

The members Teater Sastra UI not only came from the Faculty of Humanities Universitas Indonesia, but also from other faculties such as the Faculty of Public Health, Faculty of Technic, Faculty of Economy, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Psychology, and Faculty of Social and Political Sciences. For more than twenty years, hundreds of students have studied from Teater Sastra, which was the oldest theater group in Universitas Indonesia.

Record shows that some councilors of the legislative house, entrepreneurs, lecturers, researchers, TV actress, writers, and journalists, have strengthened Teater Sastra UI in their study times. Some members stays in the theater field by teaching and directing performance art in younger theater groups in UI as in some departments of Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Faculty of Public Health, Faculty of Economy, and Teater UI. Others became theater activists outside the university.