Tashkhodzha Khodzhaev

Tashkhodzha Umarovich Khodzhaev was born in Tashkent on 1 September 1922. From 1950 he staged plays at the Hamza Uzbek State Academic Drama Theatre, and in 1951 he graduated from the directing department of the Tashkent Theatre and Art Institute.

His first production was Molière's Scapin's Tricks. In 1952 he staged The Family by I. Popov and Abdulla Qahhor's Silk Suzani (together with A. Ginzburg), in 1953 Secrets of the Heart by Botir Rahmonov, and in 1954 Sacred Blood, his own stage version of Oybek's novel.

Khodzhaev served as the theatre's chief director twice, in 1958–1960 and again in 1966–1970. In those years he directed Uyghun's Hurriyat (1958), Furqat, a play he wrote with B. Avezov (1959), a stage version of Chingiz Aitmatov's story My Poplar in a Red Kerchief (1964), Morimoto Kaoru's A Woman's Life (1965) and Robles's Montserrat (1967). He also worked on other stages: at the Russian Drama Theatre in Tashkent he staged Nazim Hikmet's The First Day of the Holiday, at the Muqimiy theatre A. Bobojon's The Tragedy of the Ghazal, and he directed many productions for Uzbek television.

From 1957 to 1970 he taught at the Tashkent Theatre and Art Institute. He translated a number of Russian and foreign plays into Uzbek, as well as Konstantin Stanislavski's An Actor's Work on Himself. He also staged an Aitmatov play at the Kamal Tatar Academic Theatre in Kazan, which earned him the Tukay State Prize of Tatarstan in 1967.

In 1959 Khodzhaev was named People's Artist of the Uzbek SSR, and in 1970 he received the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR. From 1970 until his death he worked at the Uzbekfilm studio, where he headed the film actors' studio and also acted. He died in Tashkent on 22 May 1975.