[1] Ali was first introduced to theatre when he saw a production of Grease in London at age fifteen and returned to Nairobi to stage a version of it with high school students there.
[2] Ali assisted on productions in Minneapolis at Theatre de la Jeune Lune and Wintertime at the Guthrie Theater in 2003.
In 2017, he conducted a reading of The Unbearable Whiteness of Being, the Jeremy Kamps play, and he directed Twelfth Night for The Mobile Unit and set the action in coastal Florida with Viola and Sebastian as Cuban refugees.
[9] It starred André Holland in the lead and had a cast of predominantly actors of color including Lupita Nyong'o, John Douglas Thompson, and Phylicia Rashad.
[13] Ali has directed a variety of plays, from Marisol by José Rivera at Barnard College in 2011 to A Lesson from Aloes by Athol Fugard at Juilliard School in 2016.
In 2016, he directed Dot by Colman Domingo at Detroit Public Theatre and[14] Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical at Pace University.
[19] He workshopped Donja R. Love's Sugar in Our Wounds at Playwrights Realm in 2017 and directed a production of it at Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) in 2018.