![Ricardo_Khan_3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Ricardo_Khan_3.jpg)
Ricardo "Rick" Khan is an American playwright and theater director of African and Indian descent.
He co-founded the Tony Award winning and highly influential
Crossroads Theatre Company
Crossroads, crossroad, cross road or similar may refer to:
* Crossroads (junction), where four roads meet
Film and television Films
* ''Crossroads'' (1928 film), a 1928 Japanese film by Teinosuke Kinugasa
* ''Cross Roads'' (film), a 1930 Brit ...
of New Jersey,
and is an acclaimed director on both American and International stages. As a writer, Khan saw his first play,
''Fly'', premiered in 2007 at Lincoln Center Institute of Lincoln Center in New York and then at Crossroads, go on to win multiple
NAACP Theater Awards in 2018. The play, co-authored with writer
Trey Ellis
Trey Ellis (born 1962) is an American novelist, screenwriter, professor, playwright, and essayist.
He was born in Washington D.C. and graduated from Hopkins School and Phillips Academy, Andover, where he studied under Alexander Theroux before at ...
and directed by Khan, has been lauded as a highly innovative and moving theatrical play that makes use of many mediums to tell the story and the trials and triumphs of American World War II heroes, the
Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of primarily African American military pilots (fighter and bomber) and airmen who fought in World War II. They formed the 332d Fighter Group and the 477th Fighter Group, 477th Bombardment Group (Medium) of the ...
. Other plays written or co-written by Khan include ''
Satchel Paige and the Kansas City Swing'',
''Freedom Rider'', and ''
Letters From Freedom Summer''.
Early life and education
Ricardo Khan was born in
Washington, DC
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...
, on November 4, 1951, the first of five children of Mustapha Khan, an Indo-Trinidadian US immigrant from
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago (, ), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated south of ...
, and his wife Jacqueline (née Driver), from a middle class African American family in Philadelphia. They met as students at Howard University, Mustapha for medicine and Jacqueline for nursing. The family eventually settled in
Camden,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
, where Mustapha had a well-regarded medical practice as a family doctor for over 50 years, and Jacqueline, while raising the children and taking take of family, also continued to practice professionally as an educator and volunteer nurse in the community. Following Dr. Khan's death in 2009, an outpouring of love and respect resulted in a street being named after him, Dr. Mustapha M. Khan Way.
Ricardo’s schooling was almost entirely in Quaker schools, while his growing up was primarily in city neighborhoods of Philadelphia and Camden, NJ. His parents were active in the American civil rights movement and social advocates for change and self improvement in their communities. Khan and his siblings were also involved in a number of youth groups growing up, including the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Little League Baseball, the black church and the YMCA, and the South Jersey chapter of Jack & Jill, a mothers-led black organization dedicated to exposing their children to education, advocacy, arts and culture, the importance of self-awareness and a life of giving back. On one such monthly outing, a day trip from Camden to New York, Khan saw the 1968 Broadway production of ''
Hello Dolly'' with an all-black cast.
and was mesmerized. Shortly after that, he became active in his high school drama department, a decision that would set in motion a life course of using the arts and the power of live performance as his tool for prompting social change and the development of a mutual respect and understanding among peoples of differing backgrounds in this society and the world.
He studied psychology as a Rutgers College undergrad, graduating in 1973 with honors. He went on for graduate theater studies at the
Mason Gross School of the Arts
Mason Gross School of the Arts is the arts conservatory at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It is named for Mason W. Gross, the sixteenth president of Rutgers. Mason Gross offers the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance, Theater, Digi ...
at Rutgers University, and earned a double MFA in both acting and directing in 1977.
Career
Not long after graduating, with
L. Kenneth Richardson whom he knew from graduate studies, Khan founded
Crossroads Theater in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1978.
Khan and Richardson had fleshed out the idea for the company in a restaurant and wrote their mission on a napkin: To change the too-limiting environment of black theater of that day, and encourage a bolder, more real and more human professional existence in the arts for African-American theater artists.
Khan served first as Co-Founder/Producer and Executive Director of Crossroads, and then as its Artistic Director beginning in the late '80s, developing, staging and commissioning plays by African-American playwrights for fully developed, well-rounded and truthful African-American characters and stories. During his tenure the company introduced several revolutionary American plays, including works by
August Wilson
August Wilson ( Frederick August Kittel Jr.; April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of ten plays, collectively called ' (or ...
,
George C. Wolfe
George Costello Wolfe (born September 23, 1954) is an American playwright and director of theater and film. He won a Tony Award in 1993 for directing '' Angels in America: Millennium Approaches'' and another Tony Award in 1996 for his direction o ...
,
Rita Dove
Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952) is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the posit ...
,
Mbongeni Ngema
Mbongeni Ngema (born 1 June 1956) is a South African writer, lyricist, composer, director, choreographer and theatre producer, born in Verulam, KwaZulu-Natal (near Durban). He started his career as a theatre backing guitarist. He wrote the mul ...
,
Harold Scott,
Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee (October 27, 1922 – June 11, 2014) was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist. She originated the role of "Ruth Younger" in the stage and film versions of ''A Raisin in the Sun'' (19 ...
and
Ntozake Shange
Ntozake Shange ( ;
FilmReference.com. Retrieved October 27, 2018. October 18, 1948 – October 27, 2018) ...
.
American theater icon, innovator, director and playwright
Joseph Papp
Joseph Papp (born Joseph Papirofsky; June 22, 1921 – October 31, 1991) was an American theatrical producer and director. He established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in Lower Manhattan. There Papp created a y ...
called Crossroads one of his two favorite theaters.
Crossroads won a
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual cer ...
for Outstanding Regional Theater in 1999,
the first to ever be awarded to an American Black theatre company.
In the process of retiring from Crossroads, Khan told ''
the New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'':
''To a certain degree, forming Crossroads was about trying to change the world. But it was really, really about wanting to play a part in the world's turning—not just out on its side or margins, but actual a part of an artistic world that turns to glorify the human spirit. That's what we were about then, and that's what we're about now."
In December 1999, Khan left his company to begin a one year sabbatical in Trinidad and Tobago, his father's birthplace, which later took him to South Africa in search of a new, more global language and way of addressing the African American experience and attendant psycho-sociological challenges of trying to live a free life while black in America. He believed that the new way could come only from a new, more global self-view of the African American and his condition in the context of a global self-definition.
While he was abroad, Crossroads unexpectedly closed its doors for a season, in 2000, overwhelmed by a one-and-a-half to two million US dollars' debt.
and to decide on its next organizational direction and leadership. Crossroads was eventually revived, and in 2003, asked Khan to return to help re-open the theatre,
albeit on a smaller scale than before. Since then, Crossroads has continued to produce as an undeniable force in the American Theatre. And as Artistic Director Emeritus, Khan remains active as a creative advisor.
Since 1999, Khan has been a freelance director with artistic homes in New York at Lincoln Center, in Washington, DC at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and in Kansas City where he was a Visiting Professor for the professional graduate training program at the University of Missouri from 2008 to 2018. He also lived for periods of time in Trinidad and South Africa, and started an international collective of writers called
The World Theatre Lab, based simultaneously in New York, London and Johannesburg.
In 2005, with a commission by Lincoln Center’s Lincoln Center Institute for an original new play, Khan began writing. His first, ''
Fly
Flies are insects of the Order (biology), order Diptera, the name being derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwing ...
'', was co-written with
Trey Ellis
Trey Ellis (born 1962) is an American novelist, screenwriter, professor, playwright, and essayist.
He was born in Washington D.C. and graduated from Hopkins School and Phillips Academy, Andover, where he studied under Alexander Theroux before at ...
. But it was originally inspired years before by the stories Khan heard of the Tuskegee Airmen of Work War II, upon which he developed the pay,
Black Eagles, in 1989 at Crossroads with playwright
Leslie Lee. Khan directed ''Black Eagles'' for Crossroads, the Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, and Manhattan Theatre Club in New York, and recalled that after he first learned of the African-American fighter pilots and began working on the play, he discovered that he was related to one of them, his mother’s cousin Elwood T. "Woody" Driver who was one of the original Tuskegee Airman.
Roscoe C. Brown,
another original Tuskegee Airman
served as chief advisor to Khan in both ''Black Eagles'' and ''Fly'' until his death in 2016.
''Fly''
's debut at Lincoln Center in 2007 was as a 60-minute play, where Khan sought an almost video-game like stage style and also engaged a "tap griot" character—a tap dancer whose role was similar to a Greek chorus and portrayed the emotions and parts of the story the airmen were not allowed to express—It was a way to reach younger audiences on their aesthetic level.
But after the 2009 inauguration of President Barack H. Obama where the Tuskegee Airmen were honored as special guests
., Khan and Ellis incorporated that historic event and developed their script into a full length play for all ages, which premiered in the fall of 2009 at Crossroads. Since then, across the country ''Fly'' has been professionally produced several times.
Its 2017 New York staging, a co-production between
Crossroads
Crossroads, crossroad, cross road or similar may refer to:
* Crossroads (junction), where four roads meet
Film and television Films
* ''Crossroads'' (1928 film), a 1928 Japanese film by Teinosuke Kinugasa
* ''Cross Roads'' (film), a 1930 Brit ...
, the
Pasadena Playhouse
The Pasadena Playhouse is a historic performing arts venue located 39 S. El Molino Avenue in Pasadena, California, United States. The 686-seat auditorium produces a variety of cultural and artistic events, professional shows, and community engage ...
and the
New Victory Theatre
The New Victory Theater is a theater at 209 West 42nd Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, near Times Square. Built in 1900 as the Republic Theatre (also Theatre Republic), it was designed by Albert Westover a ...
in NY was nominated for eight 2018 NAACP Theater Awards, winning three: Best Production, Best Lighting and Best Choreography.
In 2013, Khan teamed up with Trey Ellis again to write ''
Satchel Paige and the Kansas City Swing'', a play about Jazz and Negro leagues baseball set against the backdrop of America in 1945, the year Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the major leagues, and when the country was in the beginnings of the integration movement. Like ''Fly'', ''Satchel Paige and the Kansas City Swing'' premiered at Crossroads before going on to major productions across the country.
In 2015, Khan conceived of a multi-narrative play, ''
Freedom Rider
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions ''Morgan v. Virginia' ...
'', which evolved into an extraordinary collaboration with four other writers,
Kathleen McGhee-Anderson,
Murray Horwitz
Murray Horwitz (born September 28, 1949) is an American playwright, lyricist, NPR broadcaster, and arts administrator.
Personal life
Horwitz was born in Dayton, Ohio on September 28, 1949 to Alan S. (a physician) and Charlotte (née Vangrov) Ho ...
,
Nathan Louis Jackson and
Nikkole Salter, involving an interracial group of college students on a bus headed south in 1961. In 2018, as a sequel to ''Freedom Rider'', Khan partnered with
Denise Nicholas
Denise Donna Nicholas (born July 12, 1944) is an American actress, author, and social activist. Nicholas is known primarily for her roles as high-school guidance counselor Liz McIntyre on the ABC comedy-drama series ''Room 222'' and Councilwoma ...
and South African born writer
Sibusiso Mamba Sibusiso is a given name. Notable people with the name include:
*Sibusiso Bengu (born 1934), South African politician
*Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini (born 1942), the Prime Minister of Swaziland
* Sibusiso Dlamini (born 1980), Swazi football striker
* S ...
, on ''
Letters From Freedom Summer'', set in 1964 during the struggle for voting rights in Mississippi.
In 2016 Khan served as producer and director of the highly acclaimed opening night gala ceremonies for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC on September 24 of that year, involving performers and creatives that included
Yolanda Adams
Yolanda Yvette Adams (born August 27, 1961) is an American gospel singer, actress, and host of her own nationally syndicated morning gospel show. She is one of the best-selling gospel artists of all time, having sold over 10 million album ...
,
Daniel Beaty
Daniel Beaty (born December 28, 1975) is an American actor, singer, writer, composer and poet. Beaty is known for his blend of music, movement, and words in such original works as ''Emergence-See'' and ''Through The Night''.
Early life
Daniel B ...
,
Dave Chappelle
David Khari Webber Chappelle ( ; born August 24, 1973) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He is best known for his satirical comedy sketch series ''Chappelle's Show'' (2003–2006), which he starred in until quitting in the middle of p ...
and
Frederic Yonnet Frederic may refer to:
Places United States
* Frederic, Wisconsin, a village in Polk County
* Frederic Township, Michigan, a township in Crawford County
** Frederic, Michigan, an unincorporated community
Other uses
* Frederic (band), a Japanes ...
,
Ava DuVernay
Ava Marie DuVernay (; born August 24, 1972) is an American filmmaker, television producer and former film publicist. She is a recipient of a Primetime Emmy Award, a NAACP Image Award, a BAFTA Film Award and a BAFTA TV Award, as well as a nominee ...
,
Savion Glover
Savion Glover (born November 19, 1973) is an American tap dancer, actor, and choreographer.
Early life
The youngest of three sons, Glover was born to a white father, who left the family before he was born, and a black mother. Glover's great grand ...
,
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Gail Winfrey (; born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954), or simply Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show, ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', br ...
and
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris ( Judkins; May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, who is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include rhythm and blues, Pop musi ...
.
Khan holds an MFA in both acting and directing from Mason Gross School of the Arts, and an Honorary Doctorate from Rutgers University where he is also in the University’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni. He has also served on the Board of Theatre Communications Group, the national organization of America’s professional theatres, and from 1995 to 1998, was the organization's President.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Khan, Ricardo
Living people
1951 births
American people of Trinidad and Tobago descent
American people of Indian descent
American dramatists and playwrights
African-American dramatists and playwrights
American theatre directors
African-American theater directors
Rutgers University alumni
21st-century African-American people
20th-century African-American people