Dr. Niyi Coker
Professor
Television, Film, and New Media
School of Theatre, Television, and Film
College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts
SDSU
Bio
Niyi Coker, Jr. is an internationally acclaimed playwright, filmmaker, theatre director, scholar, and educator whose work spans theatre, film, documentary, and African cultural studies. His distinguished career has bridged artistic practice and academic scholarship across Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States.
He has served as Visiting Artistic Director for several renowned theatre companies, including K3 at Malmö University (Sweden), the National Theatre of Nigeria, and Black Box Theatre (Bermuda). He is also the founding Artistic Director of the African Arts Ensemble in New York City.
As a playwright, Coker has created works that confront history, identity, race, and social justice. His acclaimed productions include Ouray, developed in collaboration with the Southern Ute Tribal Council and performed by Southern Ute and Native American actors, chronicling the nineteenth-century struggle of the Ute Nation against European expansion. Endangered Species, commissioned by the British Council, explores the complexities of race and family and toured throughout England. Preemptive, a powerful examination of Islamophobia, was developed at the Indiana University Playwrights Lab before its London premiere at London's Shaw Theatre in the West End, produced by Z-Mirage Productions.
His Off-Broadway writing and directing credits include Booth!, a musical exploring Edwin Booth's reflections following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln (with composer Barbara Harbach and librettist Jonathan Yordy), and Miriam Makeba: Mama Africa – The Musical (co-written with Angela Coker). Celebrating the life and legacy of the legendary anti-apartheid activist and global music icon, the production premiered in Cape Town, South Africa, before touring the United States with an original cast of forty performers. The production was supported by grants from the Carnegie Foundation and presented under a grand rights license from the ZM Makeba Trust in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Coker is also an award-winning filmmaker whose documentaries and feature films have received international recognition. His documentary Black Studies USA, examining the origins of Black Studies in America, received Best Short Documentary at the Berlin Black Film Festival, was a finalist at the Hollywood Black Film Festival, and earned the Silver Remi Award at the Houston International Film Festival. His feature film Pennies for the Boatman, adapted from Mario Farwell's The Seamstress of Saint Francis, won Best Screenplay at the Madrid International Film Festival.
His acclaimed documentary Ota Benga: Human at the Zoo, which tells the tragic true story of a Congolese man exhibited at the Bronx Zoo, premiered at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and received Best Documentary Director honors at both the London International Film Festival and the Nice International Film Festival.
Beyond his creative work, Coker is the Founding Director of the Africa World Documentary Film Festival (AWDFF), now in its twelfth season. The festival has become an important international platform for African and Diaspora cinema, with screenings in the United States, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Thailand.
An accomplished scholar, Coker is the author of The Music and Social Criticism of African Musician Fela Kuti and Ola Rotimi's African Theatre: The Development of an Indigenous Aesthetic, in addition to numerous book chapters and scholarly articles on African theatre, performance, and cultural studies.
His professional honors include the Kennedy Center Merit Award for Directing. He is an Associate Member of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and a full member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SDC).
From 2018 to 2024, Coker served as Director of the School of Theatre, Television, and Film at San Diego State University, where he provided academic and artistic leadership for one of the nation's leading theatre and film programs. Prior to that, he was the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor of Theatre & Cinema Arts and African & African American Studies at the University of Missouri–St. Louis (2004–2018). Earlier, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (1999–2004), he founded the state's first bachelor's degree program in African American Studies. He has also held faculty appointments at the University of Wyoming and the University of Colorado Denver.
Coker earned a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in Dramatic Arts from the University of Ife, an MFA in Directing from the City University of New York, and a Ph.D. in African American Studies (Cultural Aesthetics) from Temple University.