All my life is a theater: playwright and director Nikolai Kolyada has died

Nikolai Kolyada— Ural director, playwright, founder and permanent head of the Yekaterinburg Kolyada Theater, one of the pillars of the new drama, who raised more than one generation of artists and playwrights, has died. He was called the "sun of Russian drama." He joined the theater at the age of 17 and has not changed his vocation since. He has written more than a hundred plays that have been staged not only in Russia but also abroad. Izvestia recalls the brightest pages of Nikolai Kolyada's biography.

In the beginning, there was a "Beginning"

Nikolay Kolyada was born on December 4, 1957 in Kazakhstan, in the village of Presnogorkovka, Kostanay region, in a large family: the future playwright had two brothers and two sisters. My father worked as a tractor driver on a state farm, my mother was a milkmaid, and in her spare time she took on any job: a large family had to be fed. Kolyada's childhood was modest, but despite this, he always remembered it with warmth. As the playwright later said in an interview, they had three libraries on the state farm, and he read the entire collection of each one.

Kolyada became interested in the theater early on. As he later admitted, he became ill with the profession of an actor after watching Gleb Panfilov's film "The Beginning" and being impressed by Inna Churikova's performance. Since then, he has not even thought about any other profession besides acting. At the age of 17, after graduating from high school, Nikolai's father took him to Sverdlovsk, where he entered a theater school on his first attempt.

After receiving his diploma in 1977, Nikolai Kolyada was assigned to the troupe of the Sverdlovsk Academic Drama Theater. In the theater, he was in his own environment: in addition to playing in numerous plays, including "The Days of the Turbins," "The Marriage of Balzaminov," and "Notes of a Madman," he was a member of the troupe, and at the same time began writing. By his own admission, even then, in the early 1980s, he realized that literary activity interested him no less than work in the theater. In 1982, he made his literary debut — the newspaper Uralsky Rabochy published the story "Sklizko!" At the same time, Kolyada made his debut as a playwright, writing the play "The House in the City Center."

Freedom of Drama

The real success came to Kolyada, the playwright, in the second half of the 1980s. His play "The Game of Forfeits," written in 1987, was staged in dozens of theaters in the Soviet Union. Kolyada's tough, naturalistic dramaturgy inspired a galaxy of followers, and he himself became one of the most prominent representatives of the Russian "new drama." His plays of the late 80s and early 90s - "Chicken", "Slingshot", "Murlin Murlo" — were staged not only in the USSR, but also in many countries of the world. Kolyada later admitted that he first understood what "star disease" was when Roman Viktyuk staged his play "Slingshot" in San Diego in 1989. It was a real worldwide recognition.

In 1992-93, Kolyada lived in Germany, having received a scholarship from the Schloss Solitude Theater Academy. He worked in theaters in Hamburg and Stuttgart, and performed the role of Chekhov on the stage of the Deutsche Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. In parallel with playing on stage, Kolyada continued to write: after returning to his homeland in 1994, he almost immediately released his author's collection "Plays for his favorite Theater."

Since the second half of the 1990s, Kolyada began to do a lot not only as a director and playwright, but also as a theater teacher, organizer, collector and propagandist of the Russian theater school. In 1994, he organized Kolyada-Plays in Yekaterinburg, the first St. Petersburg festival of productions by a playwright. The experience turned out to be successful: 18 Russian theaters took part in the first Kolyada Festival, and since that time, Kolyada-Plays has become a bright event in the theatrical life of Russia. At the same time, in 1994, he developed and began teaching a drama course at the Yekaterinburg State Theater Institute, at the same time as the director began staging performances on the stage of the Sverdlovsk Drama Theater.

On your own stage

In 2001, perhaps the most important event in the playwright's bright and eventful professional life happened: he registered the non-profit partnership Kolyada Theater. Having gathered like-minded actors around him, he staged both his own plays and classics in his own interpretation. The Kolyada Theater's repertoire included Hamlet, King Lear, and The Inspector General, where Kolyada was not only the director, but also appeared on stage himself, in particular, in the roles of Hamlet's father's shadow, King Lear, and even Kisa Vorobyaninov in 12 Chairs.

The theater has experienced difficult times more than once. In 2006, due to a conflict with the landlord, the theater lost its premises and had to urgently look for a new venue. Nevertheless, the brainchild of Nikolai Kolyada was successful: for many years, the Kolyada Theater remained a symbol of Yekaterinburg's high cultural status, regularly going on tour to Moscow, performing at such prestigious venues as the stage of the Sovremennik Theater and the V.E. Meyerhold Theater Center. And since 2011, the annual Kolyada Theater festival, which the playwright himself called "January carols," has been held at the theater center On Strastnoy.

A popular playwright and director, Kolyada did a lot to support theatrical youth. In 2003, he first held the Eurasia International Competition for Young Playwrights, which later became an annual competition, and in 2009 he created the Center for Contemporary Drama in Yekaterinburg, a platform for experiments by young theater directors and playwrights.

Nikolai Kolyada's death came as a surprise to his family and colleagues. On February 25, he posted posts and photos from the performance on social media, and a few hours later he was urgently admitted to the First City Hospital. As the playwright's sister later said in an interview, he did not get out of colds for a long time, and as a result, he started the disease. Doctors diagnosed him with bilateral pneumonia. He was unconscious in intensive care, and on February 28, doctors put the playwright into a medically induced coma. On the night of March 2, Nikolai Kolyada died. Eka Vashakidze, head of the Kolyada Theater troupe, told the press that the theater has no plans to cancel performances. In particular, the premiere of the last performance of Kolyada "Orpheus descends into hell", which the director did not live to see for less than a day, is scheduled to take place at the theater today.