Bio —————>

Ali (they/them/theirs) is a performer, arts administrator and teaching artist from Chicago, currently based in Pittsburgh. In Chicago, their weird solo work was most recently seen at Salonathon and with The Dilettantes as a part of Steppenwolf's multi-genre performance series Lookout.

For four years Ali served as the Education & Outreach Director and as the Interim Artistic Director of About Face Theatre where they devised and directed Checking Boxes, 15 Breaths, Ad Hoc [Home] and Brave Like Them for About Face Youth Theatre. Ali has been a Chicago Artist Month Featured Artist, received a 30 under 30 award from the Windy Times Times for contributions to the queer community, and was a lead teaching artist with Steppenwolf For Young Adults for several years. In Pittsburgh they served as the Artistic Programs Director for Dreams of Hope, a queer youth arts organization, for almost 5 years. They teach playwriting with City Theatre Company’s Young Playwrights Program and have been seen onstage at Bricolage Theatre as a storyteller with Wordplay and as a director with Quantum Theatre.

Their one person Show, You Can Call Me Al, was produced in 2019 as a part of the New Hazlett Theatre's CSA Performance Series and has been used to teach solo performance at the university level. Ali is the Co-President of The Pride Youth Theatre Alliance, a cohort of activists representing Queer Youth Theater programs from across the U.S. and Canada. While running the theatre programming at Dreams of Hope the company was awarded the prestigious Corey Medallion Award from the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America.

Ali’s work in Theatre Education has been featured on HowlRound, in American Theatre Magazine, and in the book Ensemble Made Chicago. They have taught theatre activism classes and workshops with numerous organizations and universities, including their alma mater, Lake Forest College. Ali is currently the inaugural Coordinator of LGBTQ Belonging and Inclusion at the University of Pittsburgh.