Death of a Radical As Director is Stabbed

Mystery yesterday surrounded the stabbing of Mark Weil, a theater director praised for challenging political repression in Uzbekistan, who was murdered on the eve of the opening of a new production.

Among those horrified by the killing was novelist DBC Pierre, winner of the Booker Prize in 2003 with Vernon God Little, who had been due to collaborate with Weil on a theatre project in Uzbekistan this year.

'The shock is compounded because it's a real robbery of spirit,' he said. 'This was an enormous spirit of a man. He was very gentle and phenomenally well read. He could quote from any of the great works of Russian literature.'

Weil, who founded the Ilkhom theater company more than 30 years ago, was attacked in front of his block of flats in the capital, Tashkent, his native city, late last Thursday night. Oksana Khrupun, a spokeswoman for Ilkhom, said he died on the operating table at a local hospital. The 55-year-old's 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.

Weil was taken to the hospital by neighbors, who described seeing two young men in baseball caps waiting in front of his building. He was not robbed, and he said before the operation that he did not know his assailants, according to actors at the theater.

They refused to speculate on motives for his killing. Khrupun added that the police are investigating, but refused to say whether they had identified any suspects.

Ilkhom, which means 'inspiration' in Uzbek, was the first independent theater company in the Soviet Union through which Weil worked abroad regularly and collaborated with a multitide of foreign artists.

After the end of the Cold War, Ilkhom began participating in theater festivals around the world, and took White White Black Stork to London's Barbican Theater last year. 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. Some of Weil's controversial productions have dealt with homosexuality, a taboo topic in Uzbekistan. Tom Godwin, co-artistic director of Blow Up Theater, a British company, said that in June he worked with Weil in London on an adaptation of Pierre's book Ludmila's Broken English

Pierre met the company and had planned to watch it produced in Tashkent in November. Godwin said discussions with the British Council were due to take place this week but he is no longer sure if the project will go ahead.

'Mark told me back in June that he knew that Ilkhom's freedom of expression could not continue indefinitely,' he said. 'I don't think he could have imagined that his would end like it did. He was a compelling person who impressed anyone who had the privilege to work with him. Passionate, driven, a truly bright light of the arts world.'

He added that Weil once told him: 'Our theater managed to maintain its independent status and maybe even earned its right to say openly what it says. However, we always present ourselves as an artistic theater, not a political one. Although in this life its quite difficult to separate these issues."

Weil had homes in his native Tashkent and in Seattle, where he moved his wife and two daughters in the 1990s because of increasing unrest in Uzbekistan. A spokesman said Weil's ashes would be flown to Seattle.