Ira Sen is a third-year MA/PhD student in English at the University of Mississippi. Her interests are Shakespearean adaptation and performance, particularly in the Indian subcontinent. She has written and performed in re-imagined Shakespeare plays for multiple Indian and international events. Before moving to America, she studied somatics and performance under Navtej Johar while getting her BA in English at Ashoka University. She was a founding member of the Delhi-based performance art group Free the Verse, with whom she performed poetry and music. She also acted in several short films and radio advertisements. In Oxford, she is learning to balance school and art, finding ways to incorporate creative work into literary criticism and theory. Simultaneously, she is adjusting to an audience that doesn’t have the shorthand understanding that comes with a shared upbringing and cultural context. Her art, whether it is acting, fiction, poetry, or scriptwriting, often focuses on embodiment, affect, and simplicity.