PEOPLE
Nii Kwartelai Quartey
Artistic Director Act For Change (Ghana)
Nii Kwartelai Quartey is a professional Theatre Practitioner, Teacher and Researcher with a focus on using decolonial and decentred approaches where theory questions practice and vice versa.
Over the years he has been committed to researching and publishing some of William Shakespeare’s works particularly Othello and placing it within an old postcolonial African coastal society of Accra, Ghana. With Steve Collins, he has written on ‘Hamile Tongo’; an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet by the distinguished Ghanaian playwright Prof. Joe de Graft. He has also worked with experts of Shakespeare to translate and record sonnets of Shakespeare in the Ga language of Southeastern Ghana.
His goal, as a theatre activist, is to create a safe space that enables different languages and cultures to decentre and decolonise the study and performance of the works of William Shakespeare.
Gabriel Marin
Co-Artistic Director Cena IV Shakespeare Cia (Brazil)
Gabriel holds a Master’s degree in Arts from UNICAMP and is trained as an actor, presenter, director, announcer, journalist, and voice actor.
With extensive experience in entertainment, cinema, television, theatre, and corporate events, Gabriel has grown up surrounded by the theatre world. By age 14, he was already teaching workshops and assisting in production and set design, roles he would later assume professionally. He is one of the actors at Cena IV – Shakespeare Cia, as well as a cultural producer and set designer, and a professor at Cena IV’s Cultural Center, where he researches vocal techniques and set design, subjects he explored in his Master’s at UNICAMP.
Gabriel also works with the Shakespeare Brasil Institute and has participated in international projects like “Shakespeare Lives” and the “Shakespeare Network.”
Marcella Marin
Co-Artistic Director, Cena IV Shakespeare Cia (Brazil)
Marcella is an actress, director, playwright, and teacher with a career marked by her dedication to theatre.
She is known for being the Brazilian actress who has portrayed the most female characters from Shakespeare’s work, having played Cleopatra, Juliet, Katharina, Viola/Cesario, Lady Macbeth, Ariel, Titania, Portia from Belmont, Ophelia, among others. In addition to acting, Marcella has directed and adapted several of Shakespeare’s plays for different audiences, including children. One of her most notable projects is “The Young Shakespeareans”, where she directed “Hamlet” with young people from underprivileged areas, and the play she authored, “The World Is a Stage”, celebrating Shakespearean characters. Marcella is also responsible for developing projects to promote Shakespeare’s work in Brazil, such as “Shakespeare Lives”, in partnership with the British Council.
In 2019, she took on the role of artistic director at the Shakespeare Institute of Brazil, contributing to the promotion of classical dramaturgy in the country.
Anirudh ‘Rudy’ Nair
Co-Artistic Director Guild of the Goat (India)
Rudy is a theatre actor, director and teacher based in Delhi. Both his practice and his teaching, combine a rigorous physical theatre approach alongside work on voice and text, developed over the past fifteen years, since the completion of an MA in Theatre Practice at the University of Exeter (UK).
As co-artistic director of Guild of the Goat, a theatre company based in Delhi, Rudy is committed towards shaping a more equitable and democratic theatre landscape in the city; one where access to resourse and opportunity is not governed by privilege alone.
In 2025 Rudy co-founded Bargad – a fully funded, year long theatre fellowship for performing artists from historically marginalised communities. Bargad is now entering its second year with the new cohort set to begin in January 2026.
Collins Seymah Smith
Artistic Director, Act For Change (Ghana)
Collins is a Theatre practitioner and a Youth Worker with over 20 years experience. He is a founding member of Act for Change and helped establish the James Town Community Theatre Centre in 2011. Over the years, he has worked with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, using drama techniques such as forum theatre to help develop awareness of their sexual and reproductive rights and health. As a community development advocate, he has co-ordinated a series of behaviour change workshops focused on gender-based violence in communities using theatre.
Collins is also a Researcher, leading and managing community outreach education programmes as well as project managing a diversity of projects such as Safeguarding and Hidden Stories of Modern Slavery in James Town and a participatory study of Youth Perspectives on Gambling and its Social, Economic and Health Impact in Ghana. Collins has worked with the University of Liverpool, University of the West of Scotland, University of Ghana and University of Bath.
Neha Vyaso
Artistic Director, BraveSpaces Creative India (India)
Neha’s work with Shakespeare and intimacy was kindled during a course at the Prague Shakespeare Company. Collaborating with Ben Crystal led them to reinterpret Shakespeare’s works through a Hindustani cultural lens. Their aim is to make these timeless narratives accessible to Indian audiences in familiar tongues, sparking deep creative introspection. Their role as an intimacy professional has further fueled their curiosity about how Shakespeare’s themes can be reimagined to ignite meaningful conversations.
Neha has developed innovative workshop modules to help performers connect more deeply with their bodies and craft. They’re an advocate for the representation of women and queer voices in performance spaces and work tirelessly through policy and education to ensure this. Their unique blend of acting, directing, and workshop facilitation allows them to approach intimacy coordination with grace and empathy.
Ben Crystal
Actor, director, producer and author (UK)
Ben is an internationally recognised actor, author, and producer in the field of Shakespeare. For the last ten years he has developed the “quick-raise” process – creating professional productions of Shakespeare’s plays in 2-3 days, inspired by Shakespeare’s actors’ theatrical practice, fused with modern practices. Ben has toured the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, India, Australia and New Zealand, and has frequently collaborated with Bell Shakespeare, New Hampshire-based Seven Stages Shakespeare Company, the Prague Shakespeare Company, the British Library, the British Council, the English Speaking Union, the Prince’s Trust Institute, and the Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust.
He is an associate member of the Shakespeare Theatre Association, on the education sub-committee for the Shakespeare North Playhouse, and is a Patron of Shakespeare Week. In 2020, Crystal produced What You Will, an international, innovative digital response to Twelfth Night filmed in Japan, India, Europe, UK, USA, and Canada. He is a co-founder and Creative Producer of the Decentred Shakespeares Network.
Dr Henry Bell
Senior Lecturer in Performance, University of the West of Scotland (Scotland)
Henry Bell is Senior Lecturer in Performance at University of the West of Scotland, UK where he fulfils the role of Arts Lead in the Division of Arts and Media.
Prior to entering full time into academia in 2016, he worked as a professional theatre director and applied theatre practitioner predominantly at the Orange Tree Theatre (Community, Education and Literary Director 2009-2013) and Stephen Joseph Theatre (Associate Director 2013-2016). His written research has been published in Shakespeare in Southern Africa, the Journal for Research in Drama Education (RiDE), Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, and Shakespeare Bulletin. His practice-as-research outputs have taken place at the Biennale di Venezia (2017) and War Childhood Museum (Sarajevo).
He is co-founder of the Decentred Shakespeares Network, researching and creating practice in Scotland, Ghana, Brazil, India and South Africa.
Dr Stephen Collins
Reader in Performance, University of the West of Scotland (Scotland)
Steve is a Reader in Performance at the Universty of the West of Scotland, UK where he leads Research Development Group for the Creative Media Academy.
His research sits at the interface between performance, law and heritage. He is particularly interested in theatre histories and has worked extensively on socially engaged performance projects in Ghana with Act for Change. Before joining academia, he worked as a freelance theatre director and community practitioner.
He is co-founder of the Decentered Shakespeares Network.
COMPANIES
Act for Change is a youth-led NGO from Ga-Mashie (James Town), Accra, Ghana which uses forum/ popular theatre and other participatory methods to advocate on social issues that affect communities. Act for Change has been working within and outside Greater Accra targeting mainly young people, women and children. Our vision is to implement sustainable programmes where young people are able to access information and opportunities to make informed decisions about their health and well-being. Our mission is to effect behaviour change and improve the quality of lives using forum theatre, workshops and youth exchange programmes to advocate for social change.
Working with the Decentred Shakespeares Network has enabled the company to broaden their programmes to include Shakespeare’s work. Act for Change is governed by a five-member advisory board, three-member management team and over 50 volunteers across the country.
Brave Spaces Creative India is a dynamic company dedicated to fostering cultures of care, consent, and bravery in performance and storytelling. We bridge artistry and advocacy, creating spaces for artists, educators, and cultural workers to rethink how stories come to life, connect, and resonate.
Our training programs, intimacy direction, advocacy initiatives and creative ventures cultivate environments where vulnerability and imagination thrive, turning the creative process into an expression of care. Through Salaam Shakespeare, we reimagine Shakespeare in Hindustani, merging his timeless tales with Indian language, rhythm, and emotion.
At BraveSpaces, we believe that by crafting courageous stories, we can shape kinder futures across storytelling disciplines.
Cena IV Shakespeare Cia was established in 1975 and is a repertory theatre company that works throughout Brazil to promote the work of William Shakespeare , through his plays , workshops and audiovisual productions.
Cena IV aims to provide explore Shakespeare’s works through a lens that considers their a social, philosophical and human foundation, to speak to urgent issues within contemporary Brazilian society.
The general directors, Ronaldo Marin (actor, director, specialist in Shakespeare and PhD from UNICAMP), and Zeza Freitas (actor, director and producer), continue research work aimed at broadening the linguistic and cultural outputs of William Shakespeare, in addition to research aimed at the cultural formation of children and adolescents through this work as well as developing a passion for attending his plays by non-traditional audiences.
Cena IV’s productions have taken place in traditional and non-traditional spaces across Brazil and they are a founding member of the De-Centred Shakespeares Network.
The University Of The West Of Scotland ‘s involvement with the Decentred Shakespeares Network comes out of the two Lead Researcher’s positions as senior members of the Performance team. BA (Hons) Performance, and its connected Masters of Research programme adopt both practical and theoretical approaches and cover a wide range of disciplines and approaches from Applied Theatre to Devising, from Actor Training and Text Based approaches to equipping students with the most up-to-date philosophical and socially minded tools to analyse and make performance.
Students and staff regularly partner with some of West Scotland’s most high profiles performing arts institutions such as the Glasgow Citizen’s Theatre, Oram Mor’s Play Pie Pint theatre programme and Ayr’s local theatre, The Gaeity. The work of the Decentred Shakespeares Network is integrated into teaching and research across years and, in 2023, UWS announced a fully funded scholarship to explore and extend the work of the network.
The Performance Team at UWS contribute to the Creative Media Academy (CMA), a multi-faceted organisation within the university which serves as a research centre but also offers training opportunities, knowledge transfer, consultancy as well as equipment and facility hire. CMA funding has enabled the design and hosting of this website, as well as the digital materials created by the network to date.
ASSOCIATE RESEARCHERS/ARTISTS
Sam Houston
Sam is a Researcher, Performer and Dramaturg based in central Scotland whose work centers around ideas involving Gender, Semiotic Analysis and Modern Adaptations of Classical Texts.
As a theatre maker, they have made work involving Physical Theatre and Multi-Lingual Theatre. Bérénice created initially at The University of the West of Scotland, led to the formation of the Scotland-based company Hussh. This piece utilized a Tanztheater inspired movement style, specifically influenced by Pina Bausch, and incorporated both the languages of English and French to represent a story’s ability to be told cross-lingually.
They graduated from UWS with a first-class honors degree and have gone on to study a Master’s in Literature in Playwriting and Dramaturgy at the University of Glasgow. Sam continues to experiment and learn about new forms of Dramaturgy and theatre making, in their role as a Dramaturg.
Viknendran Sivalingam
Vik is a graduate of the Arts Council/ Birkbeck, University of London MFA in Theatre Directing and holds a PG Award in Teaching Shakespeare (RSC/ Warwick University). He is currently undertaking a practice-as-research PhD at the University of the West of Scotland on a fully funded Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship. Research interests include global approaches to performing Shakespeare and actor training.
Selected directing credits: London premieres of The Ice Cream Boys, There of Here, Home and The Drunken City. International credits: The Tempest (Shakespeare Lives & Rio Olympics, Rio de Janeiro), Invisible Man (RSC @ Park Avenue Armory, NY), Radio Serenade (Medicine Show Theatre, NY) and Much Ado About Nothing (The Whitman Theatre, NY). A much sought after trainer of actors, Vik was the Course Leader of the BA (Hons) Professional Acting at LAMDA. He has also directed or taught at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, WACArts, Rose Bruford, Arts Educational and East 15. Internationally, he has worked with Brooklyn College, Temple University, Syracuse University, Pasadena Playhouse.
Professor Chris Thurman
Chris Thurman is Professor of English Studies and Director of the Tsikinya-Chaka Centre in the School of Literature, Language and Media at the University of the Witwatersrand.
He is co-editor, with Sandra Young, of Global Shakespeare and Social Injustice: Towards a transformative encounter (2023). He is also the editor of South African Essays on ‘Universal’ Shakespeare (2014), Sport versus Art: A South African Contest (2010) and sixteen volumes of the journal Shakespeare in Southern Africa. His other books are the monograph Guy Butler: Reassessing a South African Literary Life (2010); Text Bites, an anthology for high schools (2009); and two collections of arts journalism, At Large: Reviewing the Arts in South Africa (2012) and Still at Large: Dispatches from South Africa’s Frontiers of Politics and Art (2017).
Thurman is president of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa and founder of Shakespeare ZA. He writes a weekly arts column for Business Day.
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