Shadi Ghaheri is a theatre and Film director, choreographer and writer from Tehran, Iran based in New York City. She graduated from Yale School of Drama with a MFA in Directing.  She has directed Tosca (Heartbeat Opera), Selling Kabul (Signature Theatre), Conduct of Life (SUNY Purchase), Threshold of Brightness (BMP), Memorial (NYU Tisch), Banned, (Broadway Bound), Glimpse (Rattlestick),Mother Courage (Hunter College), Tosca Tehran (Rough Draft), Fen (Columbia University), Untitled (Rattlestick Theatre), Lucretia (HERE), Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Williams College), Shahr-e-Farang (Spectrum NYC), The Girl is Chained, Death of Yazdgerd, Titus Andronicus, and choreographed Passion (Yale School of Drama), The Slow Sound of Snow and a trio devised movement pieces named, فریادا, Butterfly’s Terror, and Post Scream and Terror with all-female company (Yale Cabaret).

 

As Co-Artistic Director of the 2017 Yale Summer Cabaret, Shadi co-curated a four-play season entitled Canon Balle, directing Ellen McLaughlin’s Trojan Women, and LEAR by Young Jean Lee. As an assistant director, Shadi has worked with Evan Yionoulis at Yale Repertory Theatre on Cymbeline.

 

In 2019, Shadi  co-founded Emruz Festival. She co-curated a six-day Festival of Theatre, Music and short film created by Iranian artists. Later, in summer of 2019 Shadi co-curated a series of play reading written by Immigrant playwrights named, Immigrant MixFest at Atlantic Theatre Company. Her new play, TOSCA TEHRAN was one of five plays at the festival. 
 

She is one of the co-founders of Peydah Theatre Company

Shadi received her BA from Shahid Beheshti University in Business Administration, where she ran its Theatre Club as the first female president and produced Art, by Yasmina Reza and A Stranger Walking in My Room, a collage of three monologues by August Strindberg, Eugene O'Neill, and Harold Pinter. She originated an adaptation of The House of Bernarda Alba in 2011 in Tehran that was banned due to censorship.  For several years, Shadi has been doing theatre workshops with children refugees under age of 18 from Afghanistan who are working under terrible conditions in Iran.

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