Mark Yakovlevich Weil (January 25, 1952 – September 7, 2007) was a Soviet and Uzbekistan-born theatre director, and founder and art director

Art director

The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....

 of the Ilkhom Theatre

Ilkhom Theatre

Ilkhom Theatre is a theatre company based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Founded by Mark Weil in 1976, it was the first independent theatre in the Soviet Union, and remains self-supporting to this day....

 in Tashkent

Tashkent

Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and of the Tashkent Province. The officially registered population of the city in 2008 was about 2.2 million. Unofficial sources estimate the actual population may be as much as 4.45 million.-Early Islamic History:...

. His parents, Ukrainian Jew

History of the Jews in Ukraine

Jewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of Kievan Rus' and developed many of the most distinctive modern Jewish theological and cultural traditions. While at times they flourished, at other times they faced periods of persecution and antisemitic discriminatory...

s, had arrived in Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....

 in the late 1930s. His father was a soldier, and his mother had studied at the Theatre Institute, Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

.

His last production was the Greek tragedy The Oresteia

The Oresteia

The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus which concerns the end of the curse on the House of Atreus. When originally performed it was accompanied by Proteus, a satyr play that would have been performed following the trilogy; it has not survived...

; he was murdered the day before it was scheduled to open, and the actors went ahead because the show must go on

The show must go on

"The show must go on" is a well-known phrase in show business, meaning that regardless of what happens, the show must still be put on for the waiting patrons...

.. He was stabbed to death in the entrance lobby to his block of flats in Tashkent. He was reportedly attacked by two unknown males, who hit him on the head with a bottle and stabbed him in the abdomen

Abdomen

In vertebrates such as mammals the abdomen constitutes the part of the body between the thorax and pelvis. The region enclosed by the abdomen is termed the abdominal cavity...

. The murderers escaped after the attack.

His murder was the subject of a BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 Crossing Continents

Crossing Continents

Crossing Continents is a half-hour BBC Radio 4 documentary programme, focusing on foreign affairs issues through on-location journalism and interviews from various parts of the world...

documentary in April 2008.

Further reading

External links

• Biography

Notes: