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Nikki Shaffeeullah

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Nikki Shaffeeullah

(she/her)

Nikki Shaffeeullah (she/her) is a theatre & film artist, facilitator, producer, writer, curator, equity worker, and community organizer. Currently she is the leading the multi-year artistic research and creation project Stages of Transformation, with National Arts Centre – English Theatre, which explores the intersections between theatre and abolition movements. She produces artistic work, creative research, and sector-change projects through her organization Undercurrent Creations, and is a founding member of Confluence Arts Collective, a group of artists-activists who believe in transformative justice and a world without prisons. She creates work as a director, writer, and performer, and has held residencies with organizations including Canadian Stage, Why Not Theatre, The Theatre Centre, Summerworks, and others. Nikki is a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators.

As a facilitator, Nikki supports grassroots groups, non-profits, and public institutions to uphold equity and accountability in all aspects of their work, and runs facilitation training initiatives for equity-seeking artists and activists leading community-engaged work. She is an alumnus of Training for Change’s JCJ Fellowship for Trainers of Colour.

Her past work includes serving as Artistic Director of The AMY Project; Editor-in-Chief of alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage; and Assistant Artistic Director of Jumblies Theatre. She is a recipient of the 2019 Patrick Conner Award, and was nominated for the 2018 Ontario Arts Foundation’s Artist Educator Award. As a director she has been recognized as a finalist for the Pauline McGibbon Award and the Crow’s Theatre Rising Star Emerging Director Prize (2021). As a playwright, her script A Poem for Rabia was shortlisted for the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Emerging Playwright Award and the Nancy Dean Playwright Award (2022). Her poem Spirits won first prize in Briarpatch Magazine’s 2021 national poetry contest. Her short films have been screened across Canada and Europe and her latest project Purgatory was a finalist in Reel Asian Film Festival’s 2021 pitch competition.

A queer Indo-Caribbean artist born and living in Toronto, Nikki believes that art should disrupt the status quo, centre the margins, engage with the ancient, dream of the future, and be for everyone.