Mark Weil, 55, Tashkent Theater Director
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September 8, 2007 Saturday
Mark Weil, 55, Tashkent Theater Director
BYLINE: By ANNA KISSELGOFF
Mark Weil, an internationally known theater director in Uzbekistan
whose troupe, Ilkhom, caused controversy at home with its experimental
productions, was fatally stabbed late Thursday night in Tashkent, the
capital. He was 55.
Mr. Weil died in a hospital after being attacked in front of his
apartment building, a spokesman for his troupe told The Associated
Press. Neighbors saw two young men waiting for him, The A.P.
reported.
At the hospital, he was able to say he had not been robbed and did not
know his assailants, according to actors from his company. The A.P.
quoted a theater spokesman as saying the police would not speculate on
a motive.
Mr. Weil made his name as a dissident artist when he directed plays in
other companies in Moscow and conceived and directed unconventional
productions for Ilkhom in the Soviet era. He also worked regularly
abroad with American and other foreign collaborators. In recent years,
his updating of the classics and treatment of subjects like
homosexuality were considered sensitive in an increasingly repressive
Uzbek society.
Mr. Weil had homes in his native Tashkent and in Seattle, to which he
moved his wife and two daughters in the 1990s because of increasing
unrest in Uzbekistan. Like many Russian Jews, Mr. Weil felt at home in
Tashkent's cosmopolitan society. He traced the cultural coexistence of
Russians and Uzbeks from the czars to the post-Soviet era in ''The End
of an Era: Tashkent,'' a highly personal documentary with remarkable
archival material that was shown at European film festivals from 1996
to 1998.
He founded his Russian-speaking company in 1976 and named it Ilkhom,
''inspiration'' in Uzbek. He always included Uzbek actors and
collaborators. With no subsidy, the troupe functioned as an Off
Broadway theater and incorporated disparate styles and elements,
including mime.
A twin-city theater project between Seattle and Tashkent first took
Mr. Weil to Seattle in 1988. He also directed and held drama workshops
at universities throughout the United States.
In 1991, Ilkhom performed as part of the New York International
Festival of the Arts with ''Ragtime for Clowns.'' It was essentially a
mime show. But Mr. Weil had his four characters dancing into changing
predicaments like silent-film comics.
Last year he worked with the American choreographer David Rousseve in
Tashkent on ''Ecstasy with the Pomegranate,'' a mixed-media work.
The company was scheduled to open its new season this weekend in
Tashkent with his new staging of Aeschylus' ''Oresteia.'' A company
spokesman said that the company would carry on and that Mr. Weil's
ashes would be flown to Seattle.
Members of his troupe said his last words in the hospital were ''I
open a new season tomorrow, and everything must happen.''
