Skip to Main Content
  • About
  • Academics
  • Admissions
  • Campus Life
  • News & Media
  • Athletics
  • Support BC
  • Our Campus
  • Fast Facts
  • Administration
  • Initiatives, Plans and Policies
  • A Nationally Recognized Institution
  • International Education
  • Research
  • Our Past, Our Future
  • Offices and Services
  • Consumer Information
  • Contact Us
  • Schools
  • Academic Departments
  • Majors, Minors and Concentrations
  • Interdisciplinary Programs
  • Graduate Programs
  • Doctoral Programs
  • General Education
  • Honors Academy
  • Special Programs
  • International Programs and Study Abroad (IPSA)
  • Academic Resources
  • Library
  • Centers and Institutes
  • Academic Honor Societies
  • Technology
  • Research
  • Faculty
  • Course Schedules and Bulletins
  • Academic Calendar
  • Incoming Freshmen
  • Transfer Students
  • Graduate Students
  • International Students
  • Second-Degree Students
  • Other Students
  • Apply
  • Tuition, Fees and Payments
  • Financial Aid
  • Request Information
  • Visit Campus
  • Undergraduate Admissions Events
  • Graduate Admissions Events
  • BC News
  • BC In the Media
  • Research
  • Videos
  • Brooklyn College Magazine
  • Office of Communications and Marketing
  • Visit us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Email us a question
  • What the Campus Has to Offer
  • Vice President for Student Affairs
  • Division of Student Affairs
  • Student Clubs
  • Intramurals / Recreation
  • Health and Wellness
  • Orientation
  • Commencement
  • Veteran and Military Programs
  • Living in Brooklyn
  • Brooklyn College Foundation
  • Donate Now
  • Visit us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Email us a question
Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College logo
  • BC WebCentral
  • We Stand Against Hate
  • Calendar
  • Offices and Services
  • Library
  • Career Services
  • Honors Academy
  • Special Programs
  • Prospective Students
  • Current Students
  • Faculty & Staff
  • Alumni & Friends
  • Admissions
  • Undergraduate Admissions
  • Graduate Admissions
  • Apply Online
  • Transfer Evaluations Office
  • Campus Life
  • Financial Aid
  • Honors and Special Programs
  • Library
  • News and Media
  • Public Safety
  • Annual Security Report
  • Registrar
  • Academic Advising
  • Annual Security Report
  • Bookstore
  • Bursar
  • Calendars
  • Campus Life
  • Career Development and Internships
  • Commencement
  • Course Schedules and Bulletins
  • CUNY Blackboard
  • Enrollment Services Center
  • Financial Aid
  • Graduate Studies
  • Initiatives, Plans and Policies
  • International Programs and Study Abroad (IPSA)
  • Library
  • News and Media
  • Offices and Services
  • Pathways
  • Public Safety
  • Registrar
  • Registration Information
  • Resources for Undocumented Students and DACA
  • Scholarships and Awards
  • Student Handbook
  • Sustainability
  • Technology
  • Transfer Evaluations Office
  • Log into CUNYfirst
  • BC WebCentral Login
  • Forgot Your Password?
  • Forgot Your WebCentral ID?
  • New Users
  • College Directory
  • Academic Affairs / Office of the Provost
  • Annual Security Report
  • Senior VP for Finance and Administration
  • Bookstore
  • Calendars
  • Campus Directory
  • Campus Life
  • Center for Teaching
  • CUNY Blackboard
  • Faculty Council
  • Faculty and Staff Development Opportunities (CUNY)
  • Human Resources
  • ITS (Information Technology Services)
  • Library
  • News and Media
  • Offices and Services
  • Public Safety
  • Sustainability
  • Transfer Evaluations Office
  • Webmail
  • Writing Across the Curriculum
  • Log into CUNYfirst
  • BC WebCentral Login
  • Forgot Your Password?
  • Forgot Your WebCentral ID?
  • New Users
  • College Directory
  • Annual Security Report
  • Benefits and Services
  • Brooklyn College Alumni Association
  • Brooklyn College Foundation
  • Brooklyn College Magazine
  • Calendar of Events
  • Chapters and Affiliates
  • Get Involved and Give Back
  • Office of Alumni Engagement
  • Stay in Touch
  • Transcripts
  • Public Safety
  • Contact Us
  • News & Media
  • BC News
  • Archive - 2018
  • Art and Politics Are Inseparable in Little Rock, the Hit Play from Award-winning Playwright/Director Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj '11 M.F.A.

A New York Times Critic's Pick, the production about the "Little Rock Nine" comes out of the Brooklyn College alumnus's tradition of bearing witness, testifying, and shining a light on uncomfortable, necessary truths.

/web/new_2018news/Maharaj_02_94x84.jpg

Art and Politics Are Inseparable in Little Rock, the Hit Play from Award-winning Playwright/Director Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj '11 M.F.A.

Sept. 6, 2018

By Robert Jones Jr.

A New York Times Critic's Pick, the production about the "Little Rock Nine" comes out of the Brooklyn College alumnus's tradition of bearing witness, testifying, and shining a light on uncomfortable, necessary truths.

Award-winning writer/director/choreographer/producer Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj draws on his diverse background and traditions to inform his approach to art.

Choral scene from Maharaj’s critically acclaimed play, Little Rock.

Scene from the Maharaj-directed Dreamgirls revival.

Maharaj’s The Ballad of Trayvon Martin.

Scene from Mother Emanuel.

Maharaj served as both director and choreographer for Jamaica.

High-flying choreography by Maharaj from Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope.

 

Little Rock—a play with music, about the lives, tribulations, and triumphs of the nine black students who were the first in the nation to integrate an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas—is a New York Times Critic's Pick. And while he is overjoyed at the acclaim his work is receiving, what humbles the play's award-winning playwright/director/choreographer/producer Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj '11 M.F.A. most is the fact that the members of the "Little Rock Nine," as they have come to be known historically, had the opportunity to attend the show and give it their stamp of approval.

"It was transcendent," Maharaj says of the meeting. "They're in their 70s and 80s now and live all around the world. I believe very much what Dr. Maya Angelou said that if the only prayer you ever say is ‘thank you,' it will be enough. So to have the Little Rock Nine turn to me, the grandson of a Caribbean-immigrant domestic, a person who grew up without his dad, and say, ‘thank you,'—all the times I was called the n*gg*r, or dot-head, or f*gg*t, or all the things that kids do to bully you when you choose to live a life that is creative, artistic, and free—it all went away. I knew at that moment, I had arrived."

Born in Brooklyn and raised mostly in Long Island, Maharaj is of Haitian, Bahamian, Trinidadian, and Indian descent, and spent many of his formative years in the West Indies. He says his family and Caribbean heritage was a tremendous influence on his life and the impetus for his understanding that art and activism are not separate endeavors.

"My culture has shaped who I am as an artist and activist. From Junkanoo [an ancestral African festival], with its beautiful elaborate costumes, to going to church and seeing the robes and the nativity—it all lends itself to my passion as a storyteller," Maharaj says, adding that luminaries like Marcus Garvey, Angela Davis, Dr. Maya Angelou, and James Baldwin impacted him in transformative ways. On the interior of his right forearm, Maharaj has a tattoo of an excerpt from one of Baldwin's final interviews where he responds to a question about the meaning of his work:

"At the end of the day, my work is this: Witness to whence I came, where I am. Witness to what I have seen and the possibilities that I think I see."

The celebratory opening night of Little Rock.

Maharaj completed his undergraduate studies at St. John's University, receiving degrees in criminal justice and communications. He always knew that he was a creative person, but did not foresee that he was going to be a playwright. He came to Brooklyn College and attended classes with Woodie King, Jr. '99 M.F.A.—the NAACP Image Award- and Obie Award-winning director and producer known as "the Godfather of Black Theater"—and enrolled in the Department of Theater's Master of Fine Arts in Theater Directing.

"I always felt that when I read a play that it was just something I could articulate and be the bridge for. Going to Brooklyn College I knew that I wanted to get my master's because I wanted to learn how to speak to designers," says Maharaj.

"That's the beauty of the program at Brooklyn College and the experience I had there. It was really hands-on. You had to move your own props and your own chairs, and there were dust balls the size of tumbleweeds in the room," he laughs. "But that all shaped me because I came through the downtown theater scene and kept me honest and humble."

Many people in the Little Rock's very diverse audiences, as well as reviewers, have noted the timeliness of the story and how it echoes the current sociopolitical milieu in the country. Maharaj sees that as a gift and a lesson, particularly for the modern-day African diaspora.

"If these black teenagers could persevere two years after Emmett Till's death, then who are we today to not be the change we wish to see in the world, to not be stewards of justice, light, and truth? If we have in us even a portion of the resolve the Little Rock Nine had in them, then we come from a mighty stock! And we must never forget that."

Maharaj has been directing for years. He said he has always seen and interpreted things visually, which is why directing feels most natural to him. But playwriting came to him as a gift after a chance encounter with "the Black Shakespeare," two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, August Wilson.

Audiences connect deeply to Little Rock.

"Woodie, who founded the New Federal Theatre in New York, was doing a production of one of Wilson's plays, and during the intermission, I got the chance to meet him and walk with him a little bit. He talked to me about the concept of Sankofa [a Ghanaian philosophy for remembering the past in order to forge an informed present and future] and how as a playwright, your ancestors take a hold of you. You won't be able to let go of them, and they will guide you. And if you don't answer the call, they may be lost in time and space."

Following that conversation with Wilson, Maharaj says he was given three signs that led him to write Little Rock. He was directing Dreamgirls at Arkansas Repertory Theater, visited Little Rock Central High School and learned the students' stories of courage. He then saw the Little Rock Nine on an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show, and when some of them came to see Dreamgirls at the Arkansas Repertory Theater, he believed the ancestors were calling upon him to tell the story. Maharaj spent 13 years interviewing the members of the Little Rock Nine as well as many of the residents of the town. Some of them were on the wrong side of history in 1957, but went through a transformation; some remained stuck in their hatred of marginalized peoples.

The challenges that Maharaj faced in getting Little Rock to the stage were not of the artistic kind. Instead, he says, the obstacles came from certain producers.

"They told me as a person of color that you cannot be, as Walt Whitman would say, ‘multitudes.' You have to be one thing. I have always seen myself as multitudes. Unapologetically. I tell every single person in my tribe that you have to be multitudes, particularly in these very strange political times we're living in, where people are literally, trying to roll back the clock of history and the progress we have made," Maharaj says. "We must all become beacons of light and truth. If we do not show up as our fully authentic selves, then, to paraphrase Nelson Mandela, the world is a much dimmer place."

Little Rock is playing at the Sheen Theater for Thought & Culture in New York until September 8.

 

The Brooklyn College Department of Theater is able to provide its graduate and undergraduate students with the kind of comprehensive learning and experience they need to thrive in the theater world thanks to the generous support of alumni and friends received through the Brooklyn College Foundation. To learn about the various ways to contribute to student success, please visit the foundation website.

Back to BC News
  • Additional Content - Text and rightColumn: Tweet

News & Media

Back to News & Media

Image of a phone with social media icons.

Let’s Stay Connected

Our social media directory features all our accounts from across campus.

Fall 2022 COVID-19 Guidelines

Fall 2022 COVID-19 Guidelines

Prepare for a crucial transition for the fall 2022 semester.

Group of faculty members

Outstanding Professors

Our highly trained faculty are leaders in their fields. Come learn from them.

View of the upper portions of buildings from the residential neighborhoods around the Brooklyn College campus.

Housing Options

Learn about housing options that are available in Brooklyn. 

  • Home
  • Directory
  • Employment
  • IT Remote Support
  • Remote Technology Resources
  • Privacy Policy
  • Policies
  • Contact
  • Text Only Website
  • Site Map
The City University of New York

© 2025 All Rights Reserved Brooklyn College
2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210
718.951.5000 -10.1.1.11