Mikaal Sulaiman is a Tony Award-winning artist who works across film, television, theatre, and sound design. As the founder of Black Enso and Moor Noor, he blends technical innovation with avant-garde artistry to craft narratives that challenge conventions.

The foundation of Mikaal’s practice was laid in London, at the London International School of Performing Arts, where he trained in the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq under Thomas Prattki, a Lecoq protégé who helped lead his school in Paris. There he learned to read the world as movement: how a color, a material, a word, or a sound carries its own rhythm and weight, and how bodies in space reveal emotion, tension, and hierarchy before a single line is spoken. That training in visual, textual, and physical storytelling became the grammar of everything he makes, and the root of his sound-forward approach.

Throughout his career, Mikaal has collaborated with some of the most prominent names and brands in the industry. He wrote for two seasons of #1 Happy Family USA, created by Ramy Youssef and produced by A24 and Amazon MGM Studios, and brought his creative vision to advertising projects for Mercedes-Benz, Hulu, The Weinstein Company, Red Bull, Procter & Gamble, the Grammy Awards, Asics, and Skittles. Most recently, he partnered with his brother, Amir Sulaiman, on the short film Laying Flowers.:.Setting Fires, serving as Creative Director and Editor. Together, they are also developing an original play commissioned by the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC) in lower Manhattan, which Mikaal is directing.

Black Enso is an Aesthetic Intelligence company that applies rigorous, disciplined thinking to the full range of creative output: sonic, visual, directorial, and philosophical. A sanctuary for the creative mind, it teaches taste, originality, and artful decision-making in the age of AI to people whose work depends on refined creative judgment. It began in 2020 with the Black Enso Podcast, which Mikaal created and hosts, and which explores the creative process through intimate sonic essays and deep exploratory conversations with artists.

As a sound designer and composer, his credits include award-winning Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. In 2026 he won the Tony Award for Best Sound Design of a Play for Death of a Salesman (Winter Garden Theatre, directed by Joe Mantello, with Nathan Lane & Laurie Metcalf), becoming the first Black artist to win the Tony for sound design. His other Broadway credits include Death of a Salesman (2022, Hudson Theatre, directed by Miranda Cromwell, with Wendell Pierce & Sharon D Clarke), An Enemy of the People (with Jeremy Strong & Michael Imperioli), Doubt (with Liev Schreiber & Amy Ryan), Fat Ham (Pulitzer Prize for Drama), Macbeth (with Daniel Craig & Ruth Negga), and Thoughts of a Colored Man, among others. His Off-Broadway work on Primary Trust (Pulitzer Prize for Drama), Sanctuary City, Fairview (Pulitzer Prize for Drama), and Underground Railroad Game has further cemented his reputation for creating immersive sonic landscapes. His accolades include the 2024 Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in Design, a 2023 Obie Special Citation, the Creative Capital Award, the CTG Sherwood Award, two Henry Hewes Design Awards, and nominations for the Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards, among others.

Beyond production, he is deeply committed to fostering the next generation of artists, a dedication reflected in his teaching: Former Head of Sound Design, MFA, David Geffen School of Drama at Yale (2021–2023), and Physical Theatre lecturer for the MFA Acting program at the University of California, San Diego. He holds a BFA from the University of the Arts.

Mikaal’s work bridges the realms of live performance, immersive sound, and digital storytelling. In each endeavor, he seeks to leave a lasting impact across mediums. His ambition remains to disrupt conventions and create work that transcends categorization.