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Saheem Ali is a Kenyan theatre director. He is Associate Artistic Director at The Public Theater in New York City.
Ali was first introduced to theatre when he saw a production of Grease in London at age fifteen and returned to Nairobi to stage a version of it with high school students there.
In 2009, he was assistant director for Giant and in 2010 for Angels in America, both at Signature Theatre Company. In 2010 he assisted on A Free Man of Color at Lincoln Center Theater and in 2011 for The Normal Heart on Broadway.
Ali was slated to direct Richard II for Shakespeare in the Park in the summer of 2020, but with the Covid-19 pandemic, he re-envisioned the production as a serialized radio play, co-produced by The Public Theater and WNYC-FM radio. It starred André Holland in the lead and had a cast of predominantly actors of color including Lupita Nyong'o, John Douglas Thompson, and Phylicia Rashad. He followed with two more radio plays, including Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck and the 2021 bilingual Romeo y Julieta starring Lupita Nyong'o.
The National Endowment for the Arts describes Ali's signature as "his ongoing work with plays that contemporize and expand Shakespeare". In summer 2021, he directed Merry Wives, an adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor by Jocelyn Bioh for The Public. In 2022, he directed Fat Ham, a new play by James Ijames, that received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Ali had previously worked with Ijames when he workshopped Kill Move Paradise at National Black Theatre in 2016 and directed it in 2017.
He directed Nollywood Dreams by Jocelyn Bioh at Cherry Lane Theater in 2017 and at MCC Theater in 2021. In 2018, he directed Tartuffe at PlayMakers Repertory Company, and in 2019 he directed The Rolling Stone at Lincoln Center Theater. In 2019, he directed Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror at Signature Theatre Company and Anne Washburn's Shipwreck at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.
He workshopped Donja R. Love's Fireflies at Rising Circle Collective and New Dramatists in 2017 and 2018, respectively, and directed it at Atlantic Theater Company in 2018. He workshopped Donja R. Love's Sugar in Our Wounds at Playwrights Realm in 2017 and directed a production of it at Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) in 2018. In 2017, he workshopped Chris Chen's Passage at Long Wharf Theatre and directed it at Soho Repertory Theatre in 2019 and conducted a workshop of The Dangerous House of Pretty Mbane by Jen Silverman in 2018 and directed it (as Dangerous House) in 2018.
Ali has also partnered in the playwriting process. He directed The Booty Call, a play he co-wrote with Michael Thurber at Inner Voices in 2016 and workshopped it the following year at Roundabout Underground. Ali worked with Michael Thurber and Mkhululi Mabija on Goddess for the O’Neill Musical Theater Conference in 2013, and the play developed to be co-written by Thurber and Jocelyn Bioh at Theater Latte Da in 2017, with Ali directing it at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2022.
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