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.  

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