SHARIFFA ALI
Director of Theatre, Film,
and Virtual Reality
Shariffa Chelimo Ali is an award winning international director of theatre, film and virtual reality.
Shariffa created, co-directed and choreographed a VR dance short called Round Round which took the top accolade in the VR category of Digital Lab Africa 2016; a competition dedicated to providing a platform for content makers from the African continent.
The VR short, Round Round, is a dance piece that tells the story of a sacred tree from Shariffa’s birth country; Kenya, that has the magical ability to allow those who walk around it 7 times to change their sex. This myth has revolutionary implications for LGBTQ issues in Kenya, where there are currently 17 laws against LGBTQ engagement.
Additionally, Shariffa serves as the Community Coordinator of Public Works at The Public Theater and has worked on four of five annual Public Works summer pageants featuring 200 New Yorkers from all walks of life presented on one of the world’s most renowned theaters; The Delacorte Central Park. As an Afropolitan artist committed to working at the intersection between performance and humanitarianism.
Shariffa strives towards generating the optimum conditions for the development and or deepening of an artistic project. Shariffa’s fascination for developing rich interdisciplinary works set against a greater socio-political backdrop has seen artistic collaborations with a wide array of individuals including dancers, visual artists, musicians, hair-braiders, refugees, domestic workers among many more.
Other recent artistic collaborations include Black History Museum According to the USA (Here Arts), We Are Proud to Present… (Yale Dramatic Society) Folk Tales (Invisible Crown Productions). Shariffa has served as the Assistant Director to multiple award-winning actor and director Cynthia Nixon, together they have helmed three hit theatrical works namely Steve, Rasheed Speaking (The New Group), Motherstruck! (Culture Project).