Writer . Theater Practitioner . Artist
Annika Nori Ahlgrim is a writer, artist, theater practitioner, and scholar whose work spans long-form narratives, plays, copywriting, digital content, and visual design. She creates across disciplines to uncover overlooked voices, confront stigma, and illuminate the complexity of human experience through story.
She tells stories in many forms, and always has.
_edited.jpg)
My passions rest primarily in the written word and the histories on which we build our lives. I love the act of creation—in theatrical, written, or visual forms—and I see it all as storytelling. I believe that art and stories must engage an audience through the soul, allowing both society and the individual to recognize and reflect on themselves.
I create both original and adaptive work—on the computer screen, on paper, and on stage. There's so much to learn from revisiting old stories in the modern day: by updating their themes, we can lift up the narratives that need to be heard now. I love finding the essential threads of a tale, tugging them free, and weaving them into something that speaks to today’s world.
My original work springs from my imagination, often sparked by dreams that gift me characters and situations compelling enough to chase onto the page. I also draw from my own life experience as a queer, disabled woman, and I try to weave everyday magic into everything I create.
Annika Nori Ahlgrim has been writing since she was nine years old. Her genres and formats have evolved alongside her other creative pursuits, with her writing now spanning plays, long-form fiction, copywriting, and digital storytelling. To her, writing, theater, art, and design are all expressions of the same impulse: storytelling. Each role feeds the others, and every project—whether performed, written, or visual—is part of a greater whole.
​
Annika Nori is an internationally produced playwright, director, and performer. She has worked in professional theaters, great halls, and intimate black boxes, both collaboratively and independently, to devise and develop new plays. She is a storyteller who loves the psychological discovery of roles, the collaboration inherent in theater, and the simple joy of performing, directing, and writing for a live audience. Her experience as an actor informs her work as a director, where she guides performers through exercises and coaching to discover the character beneath the words. She is also exploring professional opportunities in writing, directing, and acting for film and television.
​
She holds a B.F.A. in Theater and Original Works: Playwriting and Directing from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington.
​
She received her M.A. in Shakespeare & Creativity from the University of Birmingham and the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, and has worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
She continues to study Shakespeare and take playwriting classes, educating herself endlessly and every day through books, databases, and podcasts.
In The Works
Classes
Current Projects
Plays, Novels &
Writing Projects
The Winters Tale: A modern-day retelling of Shakespeare's classic and ambiguous so-called romance. In 1993, a small law firm in San Francisco welcomes a second baby into one of their title families. The stress brings out the worst in some, leading to heartbreak, desolation and death. 25 years later, in Winters, CA, a young law-student fights for the love of her life while battling the justice system. 7m, 7f, 1 trans woman, 1 boy.
I Am Helena: An 11 year old American girl is sent to live with her father, a man she has never met, in England, having lost her mother before receiving the answer to the question she most wants answered: Why did you name me Helena? As she grows up, she finds her life entangled with the lives Shakespeare created centuries ago, and she struggles to remove the curse.
The Tower: More than a century from now, a young woman named Sally spends her days maintaining the technology and Artificial Intelligence that upholds The Tower's Resident's luxurious lifestyle. By doing so, Sally plays an integral role in maintaining the expansive and insidious lie on which their lives are built.