Nikki Lynette is a Chicago-based social impact artist and suicide survivor who fuses mental health activism with musical theater, film, and visual art, creating a lane uniquely her own. Her self-produced music has been featured in popular shows across Netflix, Hulu, Showtime, and more.
Her work in mental health advocacy began in 2016 when she returned to the public eye after a hiatus with a public confession: she had been privately battling mental illness. At a time when such conversations were still widely stigmatized, Nikki began writing candidly about depression and suicide for platforms including Afropunk and AllHipHop.
As the opening act for Pussy Riot’s first U.S. tour, she began developing material that would evolve into her musical about depression, GET OUT ALIVE. In 2019, Nikki made history as the first Black female playwright to have a musical produced by the American Music Theatre Project. She later became the first Steppenwolf Theatre Company LookOut Series artist and the first female AMTP alum to be featured at the NAMT Festival of New Musicals. In 2024, she became the first American playwright invited to the Cove Park Musical Theatre Writing Residency in Scotland. GET OUT ALIVE is currently in development under the guidance of Octopus Theatricals, producers of Broadway hits Hadestown and Gypsy.
A board member and ambassador for NAMI Chicago, Nikki delivered her first TEDx Princeton talk on how her roots in punk culture informed her suicide recovery, with her second presentation on the platform being with TEDx Chicago sharing her journey with artistry after almost dying.
Her multidisciplinary practice has continued to evolve, blending fine art, music, performance, and film into immersive storytelling experiences. After adapting GET OUT ALIVE for film during the pandemic, she expanded her vision into her documusical Happy Songs About Unhappy Things, produced by Jamie Foxx and Datari Turner, which is currently being developed as a feature.
