He worked as an actor with the Sverdlovsk Academic Theatre of Drama, and studied writing at the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow.

[1]: 397 [4]: 723–4  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.

[5][6][7] 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.

[1]: 395 After living and working in Moscow for a time, Kolyada returned to Yekaterinburg, and has been instrumental in bringing the city's theater activity to prominence.

Two of Kolyada's students, Oleg Bogayev and Vassily Sigarev have gained international acclaim and been produced in the United States.

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.

Kolyada was the target of what the BBC described as a "massive bullying campaign" due to his support of Russian president Vladimir Putin.