Kenyan theater director Saheem Ali was 15 years old when his father, an airline pilot for Kenya Airways, took him on a trip to London. There, he saw a stage adaptation of the coming-of-age musical Grease. From the moment the curtains opened and audiences were introduced to its mid-century, Americana dreamscape backdrop, Ali was hooked. And he’s been hooked ever since.

In the decades that have passed since seeing Grease in London, Ali has become an innovative voice in New York’s robust theater scene. He’s directed several successful Shakespeare adaptations, including Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and Twelfth Night, integrating diversity into those productions. He staged an award-winning production of Fat Ham, written by James Ijames (who won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for penning the Hamlet-inspired play), which marked the first time a Kenyan has directed a play on Broadway (not to mention a 2023 Tony nomination for Best Direction of a Play).

Now, Ali is gearing up to bring Goddess, a Kenyan musical inspired by the myth of Queen Marimba, about a young man whose life is turned upside down by an enigmatic singer who casts a spell on a jazz club in Mombasa. Ahead of the musical’s Public Theater debut, Blavity spoke to Ali about staging Grease at his Nairobi high school, his passion for reimagining Shakespeare’s work with Black and brown voices and perspectives at the helm, what to expect from Goddess, and more.

Tell us more about bringing Grease to your Nairobi high school.

I went on this trip and I was just obsessed with [Grease] that I saw when I was in London. I came back to Kenya and I didn’t know there was a movie [version] at the time, but I was so obsessed I wrote the script from my memory of seeing the show on stage. And then I convinced my friends at Jamu [Jamhuri High School] to put up a show and we were like, for KSPCA. I had my whole angle set.

[Jamhuri High School] is an all-boys school, so I had to find girls to be in the show. So I went to State House Girls and I talked to the headmistress there. She agreed. From there, I just fell into directing. I’d seen the show in London and someone needed to tell everyone where to go and what to do. It was very ad hoc, very passion-fueled, and full of just, like, love for this thing. I just got bitten by the bug.

What was your biggest takeaway from that production?

It kind of made me have the courage to take initiative on things and to lean into things that I was passionate about. At the time, I wanted to make a show, and I just had to figure out how to do it. I guess that was one of the biggest lessons — that if I care about something, then I can convince others to care about it too, and together we can make something special.

How did you get involved with the Phoenix Players, a former prestigious theater company based in Nairobi?

Someone from the Phoenix Players came to see my production of Grease and they wrote me a letter. In the letter, they wrote, “Hi, like I saw you in Grease. I thought you were really good in the show. Would you like to be in a show of mine at Phoenix Players? It’s called Romeo and Juliet. The role is Mercutio. Let me know.” I thought, oh, great. I knew nothing about Shakespeare. I knew nothing about theater, actually. But I said yes, and I went in, and I just completely had my mind blown again. All of a sudden, now I was an actor in a company with a director and actually getting to see a play being put together. It was my introduction to actual professional theater making. I met Lupita [Nyong’o], who is now a lifelong friend of mine, during that production. Working with them made me realize I could actually do this as a profession.

You’re known for your diverse approach to reimagining Shakespeare’s work. Where does that passion and commitment come from?

When I did Shakespeare at Phoenix Players, I was invited into a world where we were all Black and brown kids who were engaging with Shakespeare as ourselves. No one was telling us you have to speak it with a certain accent. We were speaking it like Kenyans [and] performing as Kenyans. So when I came to the U.S. and all of a sudden every Shakespeare play I see is mostly white people. If there’s any person of color, they’re on the periphery. They’re not at the center and, at the time, they were speaking as if they’re Brits and not American. It just felt so stilted and so outside of the invitation I had had as a Kenyan to engage with the material.

Shakespeare is a language that expresses an emotion. That’s it. So to make up some rules about who is allowed to be at the center of it or how they have to present themselves just was antithetical to what I had been introduced to with Shakespeare. So I made it my mission to not only center people of color in the Shakespeare that I do, but to also find ways in which we interrogate language and authenticity of expression.

Let’s talk about Goddess, which is about to make its Public Theater debut. What’s been your journey realizing this story for the stage?

I read about the myth [of Queen Marimba] in high school and I was really taken by it. I was like, wow, this goddess of music — she was beautiful and cursed to never find love. And I thought how compelling that is, and it kind of stuck with me. It didn’t leave me. So when I moved to the States and I was exploring what kind of director I wanted to be and what kind of material I wanted to make, I decided after graduate school that I would love to make an original musical, and I would love for it to be set in Africa.

At the time, it was going to be set in like a village in pre-colonial Africa, in a city that didn’t need to be named, and I got some collaborators and started to flesh it out as a story, and I tried writing it myself. At a certain point, I was exploring what it would mean to create an original musical from scratch that had some, like, themes and resonance with my place of birth, without it necessarily being Kenya. After many years, that evolved into moving to a modern setting, into setting it in Mombasa and giving it like a contemporary feel, [and] setting it in a jazz club instead of in a village. I really allowed the piece to find itself as I grew as a director and artist.

As this is for a mostly Western audience, what elements of the show were top of mind when it came to translating Africa and African experiences to the stage?

What was key was finding a story and a container and a world that expressed it for me. Like I said, the original piece was set in the past and it expressed a moment in history that is not contemporary. I found myself not being satisfied with that. Part of the challenge was to figure it out, because this myth, of course, is ancient and prehistoric. It’s about a time of the gods and goddesses and the creation of music. So I figured out how I can hold that part while expanding the story in a way that created conflict and drama and all these ingredients that you need in a successful show.

I also wanted a generational conflict in the piece. It’s about two young people who are finding themselves, finding their voices, and they have to come up against tradition and societal pressures and expectations. I wanted to really find a way to be truthful to, like, the culture that I come from. Theater is about empathy, and theater is about showing how we’re more alike than different. So I wanted someone who’s not Kenyan to see themselves in this very Kenyan personal struggle. Because for me, it translates.

Western media and entertainment has struggled with African representation since… well, forever. What do you think both the West and those on the continent can do to improve representation and give African talent a seat at the table?

I think it’s about supporting the voices who are African and want to tell African stories in their way. That’s always been my mission with [Goddess] from the beginning. I’ve been very fortunate to have producers who have supported that all the way. So, you know, it’s that initiative thing that I was talking about from my Grease days — I had to have a vision, I had to articulate it, and then I had to convince other people to buy into it and get passionate about the same thing. But had I not been so fortunate, had I not been lucky to have a father who was able to take me to London, to come to the U.S. and study theater, to have the opportunity to be at the Public Theater and have an institution that’s supporting me as an artist, I wouldn’t be where I am right now with Goddess. I think it’s just about cultivating and supporting voices who are authentically African and want to create pieces that reflect their particular relationship with the continent.

What do you hope audiences take away from Goddess?

I’m hoping that Goddess will give [audiences] a little taste of my Kenya, because we all have our own versions of Kenya, right? We’re gonna experience mine, which is a dance floor with eclectic music, where passion and a life-changing experience can occur, because that’s my version of what I’ve experienced when I was in Kenya. I hope it makes people want to go to Kenya and love to be at a place like Moto Moto to capture that energy. I hope it’s just going to be entertaining, illuminating, and allow audiences to travel, even just mentally, to a different part of the world.

Goddess will run from April 29 to June 1 at the Public Theater in New York City.