Yasmine “Yassi” Jahanmir is an American theatre director who never uses the same approach twice. Inspired by the specific capabilities of the people in the room and the particular circumstances of the play, she creates physical, audacious, ensemble work that keeps the audience slightly off-balance. 

Of Iranian and Italian descent, she works bilingually across Italy and the U.S. with genuine roots in both. Her productions move across unusual spaces and disciplines: a swimming pool with European synchronized swimming champions, an ensemble of female performers embodying male perpetrators of gender-based violence across six countries and various cultural movement tradition. She starts from a place of deep research, not to reproduce but to make connections between the past and the present. She asks what the play means now.

Based between Italy and the U.S., she is Artistic Director of Arêté Theatre and Co- Artistic Director of the Schechner Plays Festival (NYC) 2027. Her scholarly work has been published by TDR: The Drama Review, Theatre Topics, and Routledge.