Nikki Appino, Producer/Director

Nikki Appino is an award-winning media and theater artist with over twenty-five years of experience. As a director, writer, and producer, Appino has taken on subjects ranging from religion and sports to American history and pop culture. She has received numerous awards including an NEA directing fellowship. Presently a freelance television producer, Appino specializes in all forms of nonfiction entertainment including news, documentary, and reality.

Nikki began her training as a writer and director at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts’ Experimental Theater Program. After graduation, Nikki moved to Seattle where she established her directing career at west coast theatres including The Empty Space, Portland Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Rep, New City Theatre, and the Northwest New Works Festival.

In 1991, Nikki won the National Endowment for the Arts directing fellowship and returned to New York City to work on Joanne Akaliatis’s production of Henry IV Part One & Two at the Public Theater.

Appino returned to Seattle in 1992 and founded the company House of Dames to develop and produce original theater works. She wrote and directed the play Subrosa with Kristen Newbom, and adapted and directed Dark Night of Souls and her own original work, Lazarus. In 1995, Nikki produced her first two films, the short works Threshold and Thibadeaux Sally, which played to festival audiences in Seattle, San Francisco, and New York City.

Starting in 1998, House of Dames produced one original work each year including, Invisible Ink, Before the Comet Comes, and the acclaimed Djinn, described as "a power far beyond words" by American Theater Magazine. In 2000, House of Dames took over a decommissioned naval base and built a roller derby track from the ground up for Rain City Rollers, a musical set in the 1930s and based on the myth of Orpheus. Performed on roller skates, this highly acclaimed extravaganza had an extended run and played to sold-out crowds.

In 2003, acclaimed composer and singer-songwriter Robin Holcomb selected Appino to direct O, Say a Sunset, a multimedia stage show based on the life and letters of environmentalist Rachel Carson. The show traveled to five major US cities.

In 2004, Appino returned New York City and began working as a freelance producer and production manager for major media outlets on projects ranging from educational CD-ROMs to weekly television series. She has most recently worked with Triple Threat Television as a supervising producer on dLifeTV for LifeMed Media and CNBC and, working under the noted executive producer Thom Beers, co-produced Dead Tenants for Discovery/TLC. In addition to her work with major media outlets, she independently produced and directed White Tara, a one-hour film piece documenting teachings with Tibetan Buddhist lama, Gehlek Rimpoche.

Under the Appino Productions banner, Nikki is currently developing two documentaries - American Rimpoche: A Tibetan Lama in the Twenty-first Century about the coming of Tibetan Buddhism to the West, and The Great American Rodeo, which follows the lives of four rodeo riders - as well as Ancient Wisdom/Modern World, a proposed television series about new approaches to shamanistic traditions.