Alumnus Saheem Ali '07 Announced as Associate Artistic Director of The Public Theater

By
Audrey Deng
August 27, 2020
Saheem Ali

Alumnus Saheem Ali ’07 joins The Public Theater as one of its new Associate Artistic Directors, along with Shanta Thake. Ali will serve as Associate Artistic Director and Resident Director, effective immediately.

The Public Theater is an internationally renowned venue known for its off-Broadway productions of award-winning plays. Founded over sixty years ago as one of the nation’s first nonprofit theaters, The Public has long operated on the principles that theater is an essential cultural force and that art and culture belong to everyone. Ali and Thake, in joining the theater as directors, will support and further the Public’s original vision of a theater for and by the public.

"These are turbulent times for our country and our field,” said Ali in a comment to Broadway World. “We've been reminded that the journey towards racial equality is far from over. As a theater community, we must continue to ask what we can do better and consider the ways in which we have been inadvertently but effectively complicit in the tenets of white supremacy and anti-Blackness."

In his position as Associate Artistic Director and Resident Director, Ali’s responsibilities include seeding, creating, developing and directing productions for all the stages of The Public Theater, serving to craft the plays, programs, and policies of The Public at the highest artistic level.

Ali graduated from the Theatre program with a concentration in Directing. He had previously studied acting, but, as he explained to Lincoln Center Theater, “I found that as an actor I couldn’t shut out the big-picture stuff.” When he got to graduate school, he decided to focus on directing.

"It is a joy to welcome Saheem Ali onto the staff of The Public, where he has already made a home in the last few years,” said Artistic Director Oskar Eustis in a comment to Broadway World. “Saheem is a brilliantly talented and versatile director, a calm and powerful leader, and a man whose values and integrity are a perfect match for The Public. I have grown to cherish and rely on him in the last years, and I eagerly look forward to working with him to craft the future of The Public."

This summer, Ali conceived for the radio and directed Richard II starring André Holland for The Public, in collaboration with WNYC. Recent productions include Shipwreck (Woolly Mammoth), Fires in The Mirror (Signature Theatre), The Rolling Stone (Lincoln Center Theater), The New Englanders (MTC), and Passage (Soho Rep). His original musical Goddess, with Michael Thurber and Jocelyn Bioh ’08, will receive its world premiere at Berkeley Rep in 2021. He is a New York Theater Workshop Fellow and Usual Suspect, a Sir John Gielgud SDCF Fellow, and a Shubert Fellow.