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Ricardo Khan

Ricardo Khan is a Tony Award- winning Artistic Director who has been recognized for his distinguished career of major creative contributions to the American Theatre movement. In 1978 he co-founded the Crossroads Theatre Company, one of history’s few African American theatre organizations to ever become nationally and internationally prominent as a major professional regional arts institution, having launched countless careers for writers, directors and actors of color, and over one hundred premieres of new plays for the American theatre, for Broadway and for television. On June 5, 1999, his company, Crossroads, became the first ethnic-specific theatre to have ever received the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre in America.

In December 1999, Khan left Crossroads to begin a one-year sabbatical in Trinidad, W.I, the country of his father’s birth. By that time he had also completed a three-year commitment to Theatre Communications Group, the national service organization for America’s professional theatres, for which he was its Board President. While living in Trinidad, he met Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott and Albert Laveau of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, and with them, began exploring ideas for the creation of an international company of artists from around the world. Six years later he founded the World Theatre Lab, an international writers’ collective based simultaneously in New York, London and Johannesburg that has since gone on to support its nearly three dozen writers in the development of new stories and scripts for stages around the world. On Broadway Mr. Khan was the originating producer of the 1988 production of Paul Robeson starring Avery Brooks, and in 1999 he was on the producing team of the Tony Award-nominated It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues. He returned to Broadway in 2005 shortly after the passing of esteemed playwright August Wilson, to write, stage, and with co-producer Woodie King, Jr., present the Broadway tribute to August Wilson in the theatre that now bares his name. In 2006 he served as Associate Director of Hot Feet!, a musical developed by Maurice Hines and featuring the songs of Earth, Wind and Fire.

Mr. Khan eventually returned to Crossroads to direct Melba Moore in her autobiographical play, Sweet Songs of the Soul, Linda Nieves Powell’s Yo Soy Latina, Trevor Rhone's Two Can Play, and Mandela!, an original oratorio by Steven Fisher based on the life of Nelson Mandela. Since 2009, he has been Crossroads’ Founding Director and Creative Advisor, while also serving at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, where he is Artist-In-Residence and the lead Mentor for an emerging artists program at the Lincoln Center Institute. He is an Artistic Associate at the Vineyard Playhouse on the island of Martha’s Vineyard and a Visiting Professor for the professional graduate theatre program of the University of Missouri in Kansas City. He also continues to be associated with the Market Theatre in Johannesburg and Theatre Royal Stratford East in London.

Ricardo Khan is set to direct the upcoming production of FLY!, the story of the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II at the Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, a critically acclaimed play he also co-wrote with Trey Ellis. Other writing credits include Kansas City Swing, also co-written with Trey Ellis, which is set to premiere at Crossroads in New Brunswick, NJ and then Kansas City early in 2013.

Mr. Khan lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. His father, the late Dr. Mustapha M. Khan, was of East Indian descent, born in Trinidad. His mother, Jacqueline D. Khan, currently a resident of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is originally from Philadelphia and is of African American heritage. They met during their years of studies at Howard University.

Ricardo Khan holds a BA in Psychology from Rutgers College and an MFA in acting and directing from Mason Gross School of the Arts. He received an Honorary Doctorate from Rutgers University in 1992 and was elected to the University’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 1997.