Board of
Directors

Mr.
Maharaj is civil and arts activist.
Rajendra is the Associate
Artistic Director of the award
wining Syracuse Stage. His
regional directing credits include: Freedom Theatre, Actors
Theatre of Louisville, St. Louis Black Rep, Arkansas
Repertory Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Prince
Musical Theatre, Theatre of the Stars, The Goodman Theater,
Syracuse Stage, and Alliance Theatre.
His New York city credits include: the Public
Theatre, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Lark Play Development
Center, New Federal Theatre, Second Stage, Rebel Theater,
Making Books Sing, and Here.
He has held artistic residencies with The Public
Theater, Freedom Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Kennedy Center,
Crossroads Theatre, Lark Play Development Center, Arkansas
Repertory Theatre, and Amas Musical Theatre.
Mr.
Maharaj has penned several plays including: Little Rock,
Mississippi Night, Diss Diss & Diss Dat, Twenty-Five,
Gray, Children of the Dream and BlackfootNotes.
He is the Co.-Conceiver of two spoken word plays Exposures
and History of the Word. He has recently been
commissioned by the Tony
Award
winning Alliance
Theater
and The
King Center
to create a new work inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Mr.
Maharaj is the Co. Founder and Director of River Voices, an
African American and Latino Playwriting festival in
collaboration with the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Mr.
Maharaj was a former visiting lecturer at Carnegie Mellon
School of Drama, and in the Spring will be an Adjunct
Professor at Syracuse University’s School of Drama.
Academically, he holds a Masters Degree in Fine Arts in
Directing from CUNY Brooklyn College.
Mr. Maharaj is an alumnus of Lincoln Center
Directors Lab, a member of Society of Stage Directors and
Choreographers, Dramatists Guild of America, Negro Ensemble
Co., and the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People. He has served as a panelist for the
National Endowment for the Arts and Theater Communications
Group.
He is a former director in training of the daytime
Emmy Award winning directing team at ABC’s All My
Children.
He is a founding member and the Producing Artistic
Director of Rebel Theater.
Mr.
Maharaj is the recipient of several prestigious grants and
awards including National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre
Communications Group Career Development Program for
Directors TCG New Generations Grant in partnership with the
Arkansas Repertory Theatre , the Winthrop Rockefeller
Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Brooklyn
Arts Council Grant, Puffin Foundation, Time Warner Diverse
Voices Fund, and the Van Lier Directing Fellowship. He is
also the recipient of the Woodie
King Jr. Award
for Outstanding Direction and four Vivian Robinson AUDELCO
awards and
fourteen AUDELCO
nominations
for his
direction and choreography.
He was the Assistant to the Director on the Tony
Award
Winning Broadway revival A
Raisin in the Sun
at the Royale Theatre. He is the director of the Broadway
bound musical adaptation of E. Lynn Harris’ New York
Times Bestselling novel “Invisible Life”
with music and lyrics by R&B legends
Ashford& Simpson.
Mr.
Maharaj has been featured in the American Theatre magazine,
Yale Review, New York Times, The NAACP Crisis News, Chicago
Sun Times, Ebony, Arkansas Times, Uptown Magazine,
Amsterdam News, and Variety for his work in the American
theater.
Nick
Petrie is the Associate Artistic Director and a
founding member of Rebel Theater Company.
He
recently Directed Blackfootnotes at
the New
York Musical Theater
festival, 365
Days 365 Plays at The
Public Theatre
and recently competed a workshop production of The
Black Doctor. Assistant
Directing credits include: The Fox Theater (Atlanta, GA) Dreamgirls with
Jennifer Holiday,
Rebel Theater Companies Ghosts,
The Maverick Theatre Exposures,
Ensemble Studio Theatre Blackfootnotes,
Rasa Theater Company Abortion and The
Movie Man,
The Paul Robinson Theatre Jamaica,
Actors Theatre of Louisville Classyass and Nightswim, The Lark
Playwright Development Center and NYTW.
Producing credits
include: History of The Word, which
premiered at the Tony
Award Winning Crossroads Theater,
NJ, Rasa Theater Company’s Abortion and The
End of the Apurnas. Currently he is producing the highly anticipated
docudrama It Happened In Little Rock which
is currently scheduled for the 2009 off-Broadway season.
As
an actor, Nick has worked in Theatre, Film &
Television. Credits include but are not limited to:
Arkansas Repertory Theater Actor number 6 It
Happened in Little Rock, Lark
Playwright Development Center Casey in Breathe and
Agim in Man
Measures Man. Film
credits: Edward in Target Practice. Television: Strangers
With Candy. As a recording artist, Nick was a featured
performer/guitarist in the film PotLuck. He
is also an original member of the band "Nervous Cabaret."
Nick
is also a certified producer with Brooklyn Public Access
Television and the director of
"On Da Money," a financial talk show. He also
works in film production and freelances with culpepper/williams,
a motion media company. He formally worked at Miramax
Films (Marketing
and Advertising) for the "Bridget
Jones Diary"
and "Iris" campaigns.
In
addition to his work in entertainment Nick was an
Analyst at Credit Suisse and a Project Manager at UBS.
Academically,
Nick holds a BA in Theatre and English from The
University of Vermont (UVM). While attending UVM he studied
Dramaturgy with theatre scholar George
B. Bryan
and attended the Eugene O'Neil Theatre Center in Waterford
CT (NTI).
Staff

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John Pollard Resident
Scenic Designer
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John Pollard is the
Resident Scenic Designer of Rebel Theater Company Inc. Selected Theatre - Off
Broadway: Broadway Remix (St. George Theatre);
Diss Diss & Diss Dat (Henry Street Playhouse);
The White Whore & The Bit Player (Theatre Row
Theatre); Off-Off-Broadway Premiers: Exposures
(Baruch College), Love Soup (Sanford Meisner Theatre),
Autoeroticism in Detroit (Blue Heron Arts Center),
Beeping Henry (30th Street Theatre), Captains &
Courgae, Barking Sharks, Life Happens (T.
Schreiber Studio); Regional / Opera: Underneath The
Lintel, Jesus Hopped The A Train, The
Illusion, I Am My Own Wife, Dog Stories
(Stageworks/Hudson); Merrily We Roll Along (Yale
Dramatic Association); Suor Angelica, Gianni
Schicci, Die Fledermaus, Gondoliers,
Brigadoon (Brevard Music Festival, NC); Pirates of
Penzance, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to The
Forum, Die Fledermaus (Light Opera Oklahoma); and over
nine productions at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. TV
Production Design: Whitney Houston, Jessye Norman, MTV,
House & Garden; TV Art Direction: 2001-2002 Tony
Awards (CBS), Law & Order Original Series
(NBC), The Bedford Diaries (Warner Bros.). John is a
graduate of Purchase College and his website can be viewed at
http://www.jpollard.com/

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Leslie Bernstein Resident
Costume Designer
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Leslie
Bernstein is the Resident Costume Designer of Rebel
Theater Company Inc., Off-Broadway
credits include; Brothers Booth at the Samuel
Beckett Theatre, The White Whore and The Bit Player at
Theatre Row Theatres, Women’s Work at the Phil
Bosokowski Theatre and Hard Feelings at the Women’s
Project Theatre. Regionally, Leslie has designed The
Opposite of Sex at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco,
History of the Word at Crossroads Theatre in
New Jersey, and recently for Arkansas Reparatory Theatre,
Intimate Apparel. Off-Off-Broadway credits
include: Bad Girls by Joyce Carol Oats, and Love
In The Age Of Narcissism, at the Directors Company, The
Marathon at Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Beach
Plays and First Course at H.B. Playwrights, The
King of Clocks and Life’s a Dream at Here Theatre.
She has designed several plays for the Terry Schreiber Studio
including Hedda Gabler, The Big Knife, The
Happy End, Hopscotch, Shooting Gallery,
Hot L Baltimore, Loot, Life Happens,
An Ideal Husband and A Month in the
Country.
While
resident designer at the Brevard Music Center in North
Carolina, Leslie's credits
included the operas: Abduction From The Seraglio,
Cenerentola, Romeo et Juliette,
and A Midsummer Nights Dream. Leslie is the
currently the assistant costume designer at Law
and Order. Other Television credits: All My
Children, Guiding Light, and Dellaventura.
Film credits include: The Opponent,
Stepmom, Private Parts, Rounders and
Godzilla. Leslie is a graduate of Purchase
College.
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