Ricardo Khan

Ricardo "Rick" Khan (born November 4, 1951) is an American playwright and theater director of African and Indian descent. He co-founded the Tony Award-winning and highly influential Crossroads Theatre of New Jersey,

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.

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 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, George C. Wolfe, Rita Dove, Mbongeni Ngema, Harold Scott, Ruby Dee and Ntozake Shange. 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., 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, the Pasadena Playhouse and the New Victory Theatre 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, which evolved into an extraordinary collaboration with four other writers, Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, Murray Horwitz, 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 and South African born writer Sibusiso Mamba, 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, Daniel Beaty, Dave Chappelle and Frederic Yonnet, Ava DuVernay, Savion Glover, Oprah Winfrey and Stevie Wonder.

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.