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   Enormously respected theater director, Mark Weil, widely praised for challenging political repression in Uzbekistan, was murdered 6 September on the eve of the opening of a new production and a new theatre season of his Ilkhom Theater.

His last words were, 'I'm opening the season tomorrow, whatever happens.' On Friday the actors went ahead with the first night of The Oresteia by Aeschylus.

Mark was stabbed to death on the evening of September 6 in the lobby of his apartment house in Tashkent by two unknown attackers whom neighbours had seen waiting for him. He died a few hours later in a local hospital. He was 55 years old.

Ilkhom is regarded as a beacon of hope in Uzbek theatre, which has been hit by economic hardships, a brain drain and a desire for populist shows. Theatre directors in Central Asia universally look up to him as a model of courage and artistic freedom.

Mark founded the Ilkhom Theatre company in 1976. Ilkhom, which means 'inspiration' in Uzbek, was the first independent theatre company in the Soviet Union. After the end of the Cold War, Ilkhom began participating in theatre festivals around the world. Long before perestroika was introduced in the late 1980s, Ilkhom gained popularity for staging uncensored productions that combined elements of Uzbek folk theatre, Italian commedia dell'arte, absurdist plays and pantomime. Some of Weil's controversial productions have dealt with homosexuality, a taboo topic in Uzbekistan which is punishable by two years in jail.

Weil worked abroad regularly and collaborated with a multitude of foreign artists. Originally from St Petersburg and educated at the Theater Institute there, Mark established the Ilkhom Theater in Tashkent and ran it as a semi-autonomous enterprise, a rarity in Soviet circumstances, then under the virtual monopoly of the state-supported and party-controlled repertory theatre companies.

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Source: IETM