From an early age, Maxwell Brown has known his place in the circle of life.
“My parents put me into different summer camps and training programs for musical theater,” Brown said. “I confess that I was, and still am, a musical theater kid.”
At one of those camps, Brown met some of the actors behind his favorite Broadway musical at the time: “The Lion King.” He loved the musical so much that he would dance around his bedroom to the soundtrack, sometimes prancing like a gazelle.
Born in Queens and raised on Long Island, Brown’s deep love for theater and music continued at Yale, where he majored in theater, dance, and performance studies. “It started as this outlet for me to express myself, and it’s turned into a love for the craft,” Brown said. “Art can be an opportunity for people to shape who we are as humans in this world. It’s really a profound aspect of the human condition.”
Both in and out of the classroom, Brown learned to think critically about the work he makes and consumes. For him, it’s as important to think about “why” we make art as “how” we make it.
Brown, who is a member of Trumbull College, has worn many hats over the past four years: actor, singer, director, composer, producer, and even DJ. Last November, Brown embraced this multifaceted artistry when he put on the mixed-media hip-hop play “PYG, or the Mis-Edumacation of Dorian Belle,” by playwright and director Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, for his senior thesis in directing.
Brown’s path to the director’s chair started his sophomore year, when he had the idea to bring one of his favorite musicals from childhood, “The Wiz,” to campus. It took six months for him and a team of 40 collaborators to bring it to the Off Broadway Theater, a venue dedicated to Yale College performances.
“It was really rewarding and fulfilling for me to represent and imagine Black life in the surreal context of ‘The Wiz’ at such an intellectual institution,” Brown said.
His creative inspirations include musicals like “Hamilton,” “The Color Purple,” and “Sunday in the Park with George,” as well as hip-hop legends A Tribe Called Quest and J Dilla, jazz pianist Robert Glasper, and musical maestro Stevie Wonder.
Brown also found creative inspiration in the classroom from faculty members like Daphne A. Brooks, Toni Dorfman, Nathan Roberts, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his play “Purpose.”
For three years, Brown also sang bass with Shades of Yale, an undergraduate a cappella group dedicated to the Black musical tradition, and served as its musical director during his junior year. In 2024, Brown conducted the group’s rendition of the traditional spiritual “Amen/We Shall Overcome” during Yale’s annual commemoration of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., which that year featured civil rights activist and author Ruby Bridges.
“That was definitely a formative moment for us where we were able to see the gravity of the work that we were doing,” he said.
Off the stage, Brown served as a Yale tour guide for two years and a social media ambassador for Yale’s Office of Public Affairs & Communications. He was also a peer mentor with Yale Undergraduate Production, providing guidance to less experienced theater makers on campus.
Brown may be taking his final curtain call at Yale. But the show will go on once he leaves campus. In June, he’ll head off to London to complete a dramaturgy program with the British American Drama Academy (BADA).
“After college, I want to continue to imagine worlds and make experiences that put Black people and other marginalized communities at the center of the narrative,” Brown said. “I want to represent and challenge our current notions of what it means to be human.”
