Nikolay Kolyada (
Playwright & Director) is a playwright, actor, director, teacher, editor and publisher. He was born in 1957 in a village in Kazakhstan into a family of farm workers. He graduated from the Sverdlovsk Theater School in 1980 and began writing for the theatre. In 1989 he was admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR, and in1994 he made his debut as a director at the Sverdlovsk State Academic Drama Theater and the Moscow Sovremennik Theatre. In 2003, he founded the Kolyada Theater in Yekaterinburg where he serves as Artistic and Executive Director. The company’s repertoire consists of more than thirty-five works based on classical and contemporary texts. Winner of numerous literary prizes, Nikolay is the author of more than one hundred twenty plays. His work has been staged in Russia and around the world. A teacher for more than twenty-three years, Nikolay has mentored numerous playwrights recognized throughout Russia and abroad. Critics describe Nikolay’s theatre and playwriting community as the “Ural School of Drama.”
