Ludwik Margules

Ludwik Margules Coben (December 15, 1933 - March 7, 2006) was a Polish-born Mexican theatre, opera and film director. Being an active member of the Mexican theatre circuit for more than fifty years, Margules taught acting and directing methods in several institutions, eventually founding his own acting academy, the Foro Teatro Contemporáneo (Contemporary Theatre Forum) in 1991.

Biography Margules was born in Warsaw on 15 December 1933 to Jewish parents. From early childhood his parents took him to children's plays, to the opera and to productions intended for adult audiences, and it was there, by his own account, that his love of the theatre began.

Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Margules and his family fled eastward toward the Soviet frontier. In a 1974 interview, he described himself in the third person as the child who fled along the roads of an invaded Poland with the German armies at his heels. His father was wounded during a workers' strike and returned to Warsaw in 1945; his wife and two sons rejoined him in Poland only some six months later. Most of the Polish Jews who survived, like Margules, did so not under German occupation but in the interior of the Soviet Union, having arrived there either in flight or through Soviet deportation.

Ludwik Margules Coben directed over 40 operas and plays. One of his most outstanding works was his 1982 production of De la vida de las marionetas, based on Ingmar Bergman's film From the Life of the Marionettes (1980).

Ludwik Margules Coben was considered a major artistic influence and mentor. Mexican film director Alejandro Iñárritu stated, "...I studied theater for three years with Ludwik Margules. And that changed my life."

Ludwik Margules Coben was given Mexico's National Prize for Science and Arts in 2003. A Holocaust survivor, at times Margules was called "an axis of controversy".