Shadi Ghaheri

About Shadi Ghaheri

Shadi Ghaheri is a theatre, opera, film director, choreographer, and performer from Tehran, Iran, currently based in New York City. She graduated from Yale School of Drama with an MFA in Directing. Shadi has directed a wide range of productions including Whispers of the Flesh (Emruz Festival), Extinctionist (Heartbeat Opera), In the Stillness of Night (The Tank), English (Alliance Theatre), Tosca (Heartbeat Opera), Selling Kabul (Signature Theatre), Threshold of Brightness (BMP), Memorial (NYU Tisch), Banned (Broadway Bound), Glimpse (Rattlestick Theatre), Mother Courage (Hunter College), Fen (Columbia University), Lucretia (HERE), Death of Yazdgerd, Untitled (Rattlestick Theatre), and Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Williams College).

As an assistant director, Shadi has worked with Ethan Heard on Fidelio, Margot Bordelon on Eddie and Dave (Atlantic Theatre), Davis McCallum on Lewiston/Clarkston (Rattlestick Theatre), and Evan Yionoulis on Cymbeline (Yale Repertory Theatre).

In 2019, Shadi co-founded the Emruz Festival, a showcase for theatre, music, and short films created by Iranian artists, which has continued annually. She later co-curated Immigrant MixFest at Atlantic Theatre Company, where her play Tosca Tehran was featured among others. Shadi has also directed two short films, Swimming (2019) and Eros (2020), and performed in Kisses and Bullets (2024).

Shadi is actively involved in teaching drama and acting at various universities including New York University Tisch, Queens College, Purchase College, and Saddleback College. She received her BA from Shahid Beheshti University in Business Administration, where she served as the first female president of its Theatre Club. Shadi originated an adaptation of The House of Bernarda Alba in Tehran in 2011, which was banned due to censorship. For several years, Shadi has conducted theatre workshops with Afghan refugee children under 18 in Iran, working under challenging conditions.

She is a 2016 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow and was recognized with a SDC Student Director Initiative Honorable Mention in the 2013 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Shadi served as the directing fellow at Rattlestick Playwright Theatre from 2018 to 2019 and won the Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Showcase from Opera America in 2019.

Co-Artistic Director of the 2017 Yale Summer Cabaret, Shadi co-curated a four-play season entitled Canon Balle, directing Ellen Mc.

The Artist Talk with Shadi Ghaheri

Review on English

Review on Selling Kabul