The Story of Kolorash
by Stas Holodnak

I met him in Coney Island at the ocean’s edge. I was riding that old, grand machine called the Wonder Wheel. The Wonder Wheel boasts pretty views, but this time I didn’t come for the vistas. My plan was to get up high above the ground, to imagine the enclosed metal carriage as an airplane moving through the air, diving and climbing.

King Lear and Great-Uncle Schika
by Stas Holodnak

I expected more from my first experience of Shakespeare on stage: The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of King Lear should have been spectacular. Yet the play felt all too familiar, reminding me of the subject of endless family feuds over the years. An old and frail, borderline senile man, bouncing all over the stage in a shabby fur coat like a leaf in the wind, might have been King Lear to the rest of the audience, but to me, he was the dramatic version of my very own Great-Uncle Schika.