Shahid Nadeem is Pakistan's leading playwright and director of the renownedAjoka theatre.

Shahid Nadeem was born in 1947 in Sopore, Kashmir. After the 1948 war between India and Pakistan, which disputed the state of Kashmir, he became a refugee at the age of just one and his family was forced to migrate to the newly created Pakistan.

He lived in Lahore, Pakistan, where he earned a master's degree in psychology from Punjab University. As a student, he wrote his first play. He became a real author when, during his political exile in London, he began writing plays for the dissident theater group Ajoka , created by Madeeha Gauhar , a pioneer of theatrical activism, which he later married.

Shahid Nadeem has written over 50 original plays in Punjabi and Urdu and is the author of numerous adaptations of plays by Bertolt Brecht.

He was a producer for Pakistani television, on whose board he served. He was imprisoned three times under various military governments as an opponent of the military dictatorship and adopted as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

In the notorious prison Mianwali began writing weekend plays produced by and for prisoners.

Subsequently, he was International Campaigns Coordinator and Asia-Pacific Communications Officer for Amnesty International.

A fost bursier al Getty Research Institute, International Pen, SUA și National Endowment for Democracy. Este membru al rețelei Theatre Without Borders.

Shahid Nadeem's plays have often been performed and published in Pakistan and India, but also abroad. His text, " Bulha ", was presented at the Hammersmith Theater (London, UK), Tramway (Glasgow, Scotland, UK) and Helsignor (Denmark), " Amrika Chalo ”at the Davis Center for Performing Arts, Georgetown University, Washington (USA),“ Bala King ”at the Black Box Theater (Oslo, Norway),“ Burqavaganza ”in USA, at Bravo for Women Theater (San Francisco), “ Acquittal” at Highways (Santa Monica) and Theater Row (New York), and “ Dara ” at Lyttleton Theater London (UK) and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA).

Textele lui au fost traduse în engleză și publicate de Oxford University Press, Nick Hern Publishers, precum și în diverse antologii. În 2009, a primit de la președintele Pakistanului Medal for the Pride of Performance.

He has also directed theater and television shows and organized Theater for Peace festivals in India and Pakistan, written articles for major Pakistani and Indian dailies and for the BBC Urdu Service, produced documentaries on cultural topics, including the Lahore Museum, the customs of the Punjab region, the poet Iqbal, and the painter Sadeqain.

Shahid Nadeem's plays are appreciated for their strongly socially relevant, sometimes bull-headed topics such as religious extremism, violence against women, discrimination against minorities, freedom of expression, climate, peace, Sufism. Many of his texts speak to the issues of the division of South Asia and the region's shared cultural heritage. Nadeem ingeniously blends contemporary political and social themes with traditional forms and folklore, producing theatre that is both pleasing and intellectually stimulating. Music is an integral part of his performances.

Shahid Nadeem teaches the art of writing at the Ajoka Institute for Performing Arts and the Institute for Art and Culture in Lahore.