Multicultural Theatre in Times of Turmoil: An Interview with Maxim Tumenev

Maxim Tumenev began his artistic career shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. He studied and practiced acting and arts management in Tashkent, a historically multicultural city in Uzbekistan, where the post-Soviet space combined institutional elements of the repressive Soviet regime with rising nationalism. Today, Tumenev is a program manager and administrator at CEC ArtsLink,¹ an international nonprofit arts-management organization with headquarters in New York City and St. Petersburg, Russia.

Prior to relocating to New York City, he enjoyed a successful artistic and administrative career at Ilkhom Theatre of Mark Weil, where he served as performing and visual arts curator, producer, and production manager on more than fifteen tours throughout Europe, Russia, Asia, and the United States. Over the past three years Tumenev shared his knowledge and memories of his education and collaboration with Ilkhom with me in a series of conversations. Since its inception in the heart of the then-Soviet city of Tashkent in 1976, Ilkhom played a crucial role in creating a safe space for diverse people to collaborate and co-create multicultural theatre. While the theatre employed actors of various backgrounds, including Jewish, Uzbek, Tadjik, and Azerbaijani, it was primarily a Russian-language theatre. During the 1980s, works by Alexander Vampilov, Evgeny Shvartz, and Bertolt Brecht were performed in the theatre’s black box late at night and free of charge, followed by post-show discussions. Ilkhom quickly developed into a platform where performers, producers, directors, musicians, and other art-makers could express themselves in a way that was free from political ideology, despite the efforts of Soviet censors and critics.

During perestroika, the policy of transparency, or glasnost, allowed theatres to produce material uncensored by the government. While mainstream culture began embracing the freedom of verbal expression, Ilkhom stopped producing written and spoken drama. Instead, it turned to silent pantomime, clowning,²

and devised theatre. Its emotional, expressive, and syncopated clown performances embodied accumulating energies of protest in a subtle language on an eerie empty stage. With these productions, Ilkhom started touring internationally, and its message of liberation, inclusion, resistance, and nonconformity inspired many artists, audiences, and students. The theatre employed individuals of diverse ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious backgrounds, as well as those who identified as gay (officially a crime punishable by jail time in both the Soviet Union and Uzbekistan), which was reflected in Ilkhom’s repertoire.

In the early 1990s, the Ilkhom School of Drama began to train actors and directors, incorporating theatre pedagogies of Tovstonogov, Stanislavski, Grotowski, and Lecoq, as well as commedia dell’arte and the Uzbek street theatre tradition, masharaboz.³ Improvisation, physical theatre, and discovering and nurturing creative individuality in each student became the core elements of the rigorous Ilkhom training. The production of Gozzi’s Happy Beggars, built on actors’ improvisations, has been a hit show at Ilkhom since 1992. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the theatre has facilitated multiple international student exchanges. Trained at Ilkhom as a multicultural artist, Tumenev contributed to these collaborations as a teacher, translator and interpreter, organizer, and Weil’s assistant director.

Under the leadership of Weil, a self-described “citizen of the world,” Ilkhom consistently produced non-conformist theatre in the face of challenges imposed by the highly nationalist political environment of post-Soviet Uzbekistan.⁴ The theatre’s productions dealt with themes of double consciousness, homophobia, identity crisis, governmental corruption, the juxtaposition of family and societal values, and the hypocrisy of oppressive regimes. Despite Ilkhom’s official position as “apolitical,” Weil’s productions were often viewed as direct criticisms of current sociopolitical issues. In 2007, Weil was murdered. While there are multiple theories⁵ regarding the specifics of his tragic death, which remains “an internationally decried incident wrapped in mystery,” ⁶ there seems to be a consensus among Weil’s supporters and allies: that he was killed because of his art.⁷ His theatre continues to exist today as Ilkhom Theatre of Mark Weil, in its native city of Tashkent, offering both Weil’s productions and new material. Additionally, the theatre regularly hosts workshops...