Saheem Ali

Ali assisted on productions in Minneapolis at Theatre de la Jeune Lune and Wintertime at the Guthrie Theater in 2003. Ali was assistant director on several productions in Boston, including Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (CSC) Shakespeare's Henry Vin 2002 and Macbeth in 2003. He assisted on the operas Powder Her Face in 2003 and Angels in America in 2006 for Opera Boston. He also assisted on The Miser for American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) in 2004.

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.

In 2014, Ali conducted a workshop on Dominique Morisseau’s Facing Our Truths. In 2015, Ali was Associate Director under Michael Greif for The Tempest. In 2017, he conducted a reading of The Unbearable Whiteness of Being, the Jeremy Kamps play, and he directed Twelfth Night for The Mobile Unit and set the action in coastal Florida with Viola and Sebastian as Cuban refugees.

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.