That thou hast her it is not all my grief,
And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye:
Thou dost love her, because thou know’st I love her;
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.
If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross:
But here’s the joy; my friend and I are one;
Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone.

My name is Junaid Rehman. I am from Pakistan currently living in Hungary and I doing my master’s degree in public health at the university of Debrecen.

My hobbies are reading Shakespeare, watching Pakistani dramas, and spending time with friends.

Junaid Rehman, performer.

The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life, being made of four, with two alone
Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy;
Until life’s composition be recured
By those swift messengers return’d from thee,
Who even but now come back again, assured
Of thy fair health, recounting it to me:
This told, I joy; but then no longer glad,
I send them back again and straight grow sad.

Nii is a theatre maker and creative producer and activist based in Ghana and committed to improving communities through the arts.  He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Philosophy degrees from the University of Ghana, Legon. His work often focuses within Applied Arts on collaboration projects around working directly with vulnerable groups on sensitive subjects. Nii worked for one and half years with the Regional Institute of Population (University of Ghana) on the Ghana Men’s Study, an integrated biological behavioural surveillance among men who have sex with men. Additionally, he has worked with prison inmates, female sex workers and with adolescents, at a school for the deaf. Utilising techniques from Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal’s Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed, has informed creative and participatory approaches to data collection and analysis in previous research works on modern slavery and safeguarding in James Town.

Nii Kwartelai Quartey, performer and translator.

O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, my verse distills your truth.

JiYoung Choi is an actress, playwright, director and professor. She studied Acting at Columbia University and  has performed  in Seoul, New York and Europe. Recently She directed David Henry Hwang’s The sound of the voice. She  performed  at National Theatre Company of Korea and  in 2016, JiYoung performed her written play, While Ophelia’s Korean Drum Weeps, in the New York International Fringe Festival

In the 2019 York international Shakespeare Festival JIYoung performed Love Deadline(Desdemona) which adapted Othello to Desdemona’s metaphorical expression through dance and Korean tea culture. Her Young Company production has been focused on human truth of feeling through Theatre and Dance in Monodrama.

JiYoung Choi, performer and translator.