Karen Fricker

Department of Dramatic Arts, School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock University, Canada

Karen Fricker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Dramatic Arts at Brock University in in Niagara region of Ontario, Canada; and a theatre critic at the Toronto Star. With Charles R. Batson she is the co-founder of the Circus and its Others research project, and co-organized the first international Circus and its Others conference in 2016 with Batson and L. Patrick Leroux. A dedicated issue of the peer-reviewed journal Performance Matters (4.1) on the theme of Circus and its Others, which she co-edited with Hayley Malouin, will be published in May 2018. In addition to contemporary circus, her research interests include the original stage work of the Québécois director Robert Lepage; the Eurovision Song Contest; and the changing nature of theatre criticism in the digital age.