Nikolay Kolyada

Life and career

Kolyada was born on 4 December 1957, in Presnogor'kovka in the Kustanai region of the Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union. He studied theater in Sverdlovsk, Russian SFSR (now known as Yekaterinburg). He worked as an actor with the Sverdlovsk Academic Theatre of Drama, and studied writing at the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. From 1978 to 1980, he served in the Soviet Army in communications units in Perm. Kolyada began writing in the early 1980s. His first short story, Sklizko!, was published in 1982 in the newspaper Ural'sky Rabochy. In the same year, he wrote his first play, Dom v tsentre goroda. His play Igraem v fanty was first published in 1987. His first work as a director took place in 1988 at the experimental theatre "Galërka" in Sverdlovsk, where he staged his own play Nine White Chrysanthemums. He gained international repute with his play Slingshot, which gave a sympathetic portrayal of a gay relationship. The play featured a romance between a nurse and his patient, a soldier wounded in the Soviet–Afghan War. Although the gay subject matter was shocking in Moscow, it earned him acclaim abroad when the play received its world premiere at the San Diego Repertory Theatre in 1989.

In 1989, he was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers, and in 1990 became a member of the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation. In 1990, he initiated the restoration of the St. Nicholas Church in his native village of Presnogor'kovka, which had been destroyed in the early 1930s and later repurposed as a fire station.

When he began writing for the theater in the mid-1980s, Kolyada got a reputation for "chernukha", which critic John Freedman describes as an "almost untranslatable but expressive Russian noun [combining] shades of gloom, doom, bile, and jaundice colored with foul-mouthed-insolence". His plays are known for their naturalistic approach to representing life's banal and pitiful troubles. His plays were among the first in Russia to use profanity, and are known for it. His scant use of profanity violated taboo at the time, but set the stage for much more pervasive obscenities by 2010.

In 1992–1993, Kolyada lived and worked in Germany. He spent nine months at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart on a fellowship, where he continued writing plays and prose. He also collaborated with German theatre practitioners and appeared as an actor in a production at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg.

After living and working in Moscow for a time, Kolyada returned to Yekaterinburg, and was instrumental in bringing the city's theater activity to prominence. He taught playwriting at the Ural Institute and the Ekaterinburg State Theatre Institute from 1992, often teaching auditors as well as enrolled students. In 1994, his first collection, Plays for a Beloved Theatre, was published. In December 1994, he organised the first edition of the Kolyada-Plays festival in Yekaterinburg, a festival dedicated to productions of a single playwright, which brought together theatres from across Russia and abroad. Kolyada founded his theatre in 2001 - it has changed venue in Yekaterinburg several times. Beginning in 2003, he also organised the international Eurasia competition for young playwrights. In 2003–2004, without a permanent venue, he collaborated with the small drama theatre "Teatron" in Yekaterinburg.

His students would present their work at his Kolyada Theater in Yekaterinburg. His programme is cited as one of the few playwriting programmes in Russia, and several of his students have gone on to be produced in major venues in Moscow. Two of Kolyada's students, Oleg Bogayev and Vassily Sigarev, have gained international acclaim and been produced in the United States.

From July 1999 to August 2010, Kolyada served as editor-in-chief of the literary journal Ural, significantly increasing its prominence and readership.

In 2009, he founded the Centre for Contemporary Drama in Yekaterinburg, which became a platform for experimental work by emerging playwrights and directors. In 2006 and 2008, Kolyada Theatre held its first major tours in Moscow, performing at the Sovremennik Theatre and the Meyerhold Center. In 2009 and 2010, Kolyada Theatre toured in France. From 2011, Kolyada Theatre held an annual festival in Moscow at the Theatre Center "Na Strastnom".

In 2022, he was awarded the academic title of docent at the Ekaterinburg State Theatre Institute. In 2023, he became a professor at the Ekaterinburg State Theatre Institute.

Kolyada was a prolific playwright. In 2006, Kolyada told a reporter, "I've written 90 plays. Thirty of them are good". By 2010, the count of his plays exceeded 100.

He also worked in television, hosting the authorial programme Black Cashbox on Sverdlovsk State Television and Radio Company, and in 2002 hosted the programme My World on the Russia-K channel.

On 14 January 2014, Kolyada was removed from a flight from Yekaterinburg to Moscow at Koltsovo Airport due to intoxication.

As a director, Kolyada was known for stark and dramatic productions using minimalist scenery and a stylized performance style. Critic John Freedman described the design of one production as typical of Kolyada's approach. He wrote, "The use of water and the sheet of plastic are characteristic of Kolyada’s theatre art: the barest of devices, the simplest of objects, the most powerful of effects". Moscow News critic Irina Korneeva Vremya wrote in 2002 that she found his directing style to be "touching," but repetitive, and ultimately "artless," writing that "an abundance of superfluous detail and endless strolls across the stage to music are no style. They are a disaster".

In 2012, Kolyada came under fire when he declared his support for Vladimir Putin's 2012 presidential campaign, saying that Putin was the best of the available candidates. Kolyada was the target of what the BBC described as a "massive bullying campaign" due to his support of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Kolyada's blog was overrun with comments attacking his views, and his theater was papered over with bills for a fake performance.

Kolyada's theater company planned a United States tour in 2017, but the tour was cancelled due to diplomatic tensions between the United States and Russia, and the unavailability of travel visas after the United States withdrew over 1,200 diplomatic personnel from Russia. The company was to bring three of its productions to America: The Twelve Chairs; Violin, Tambourine, and Iron; and Baba Chanel. Interfax reported that the company lost US$60,000 on the cancellation.

Kolyada was often associated with the Russian New Drama movement, though he rejected that label.

Kolyada died on 2 March 2026 in Yekaterinburg at the age of 68, after being hospitalised with bilateral pneumonia.

Kolyada was born into a large working-class family of virgin lands settlers in Presnogor'kovka, Kazakh SSR. He was the fifth child in the family; his father, Vladimir Alekseevich Kolyada (1930–2019), worked as a tractor driver at the local state farm, while his mother, Zoya Vasilyevna Kolyada (née Aleksandrova; 1935–2009), worked as a milkmaid.

Kolyada's paternal grandfather, Alexei Pavlovich Kolyada, originally from Poltava Oblast, had relocated to the Trans-Urals region in 1913. In 1956, together with his wife Tatyana Kuzminichna, he moved to Presnogor'kovka as part of the virgin lands campaign.

Kolyada had two sisters and two brothers:

Vera Vladimirovna Kizina (née Kolyada; b. 1952), who worked as a shopkeeper in Presnogor'kovka;

Nadezhda "Nadya" Kolyada (1955–1965), who died in her teens;

Vladimir Vladimirovich Kolyada (b. 1965), who has a disability;

Andrey Vladimirovich Kolyada (b. 1972), a truck driver in northern Russia.

Kolyada never married and had no children; he often referred to his theatre students and actors as his "family" and primary successors.