Mark Weil, a part-time Seattleite and a prominent theater director in Uzbekistan, was stabbed to death in the Uzbek capital, a theater spokeswoman said Friday. He was 55.

Weil was attacked in front of his apartment building in Tashkent late Thursday, Ilkhom Theatre spokeswoman Oksana Khrupun said. She said he died on the operating table at a hospital.

The director founded the Ilkhom Theatre in Uzbekistan in 1976, and his productions caused controversy in the tightly controlled former Soviet state. Actors at the theater, reached by telephone, said Weil was taken to the hospital by neighbors, who described seeing two young men in baseball caps waiting for the director in front of his building.

Weil was not robbed, and he said before the operation that he did not know his assailants, according to the actors, who had rushed to the hospital. They refused to speculate on the motives for his killing.