Terrible news from Uzbekistan, according to Registan.net. Mark Weil, the impressario behind the Ilkhom Theatre, has been stabbed to death in the stairwell of his apartment building. Yesterday's New York Times carried a report 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.I went to the Ilkhom theatre when I lived in Tashkent–it provided a window to the West, a post-Soviet cultural link to theatrical trends abroad, in addition to a venue for popular shows such as “Tortilla Flats” (the musical!) which had been running for some 10 years, and “White, White, Black Stork” a classic Uzbek drama based on the stories of Abdullah Kadyri. Yes, the latter show had gay themes–but they were 70 years old. Mark Weil’s Ilkhom theatre represented the best of Uzbekistan, it was a real showcase for talent, and also showed the nation could host modern, intelligent, and deeply moving drama. I hope they keep it going–and name the theatre in his honor as a tribute, like the Hamza theatre.
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.”
As far as suspects go, I’m no expert, but someone I know compared the killing to the death of Theo van Gogh in Holland–a cultural figure stabbed to death as an act of terrorism, to punish a cultural figure and set an example. I hope this is not the case.
However terrible, I would prefer if it were a random act of violence by ordinary criminals. Something similar happened to my translator and her mother when we were living in Center-1, a supposedly safe neighborhood, in 2003. Shortly after a Presidential Amnesty, she and her mother were ambushed in the stairwell of their apartment building by a man wielding a knife. They fought back, she was stabbed, but managed to push him down the stairs after he had knocked down her mother. He ran away, and she had only a minor wound. We were told there is often a crime wave after an amnesty.
There will be a memorial service in Tashkent on September 12th at the Ilkhom. Here is a link to the Ilkhom Theatre website. Guardian (UK) story here.