Caitlin Hicks is an international playwright,
acclaimed actress
and prize-winning author in British Columbia, Canada.
Through her family of characters who speak with passion in the first person, Hicks shines a light on women making their way through the dictates of biology and culture, time and mortality. Her theatrical presentation takes her audience on a search for meaning and resonance as she delivers emotionally charged, honest portrayals of each character facing unique life challenges. Hicks toured internationally with comedic and dramatic character-based monologues and theatrical presentations to hundreds of audiences, standing ovations and scintillating reviews. A natural performer, she brims with a contagious energy, alternating easily between hilarity and poignancy, and linking us all by bringing us into a visceral experience of our shared humanity.
Comfortable and animated onstage, Hicks developed the ability to provoke an audience to giggles and tears, to hold them in suspenseful silence and surprise them into laughter of recognition.
Her Keynote presentation ‘Why We Write’ examines the singular story that inspires all her work:
“My mother created and bore fourteen children with her body — and this experience was all around me as I grew up and moved out into a world created in the image and likeness and ongoing benefit of men. As I became a woman, I began to understand that being a woman isn’t so much a topic or a theme as it is a way of being in our bodies in the world.
As I began to discover the wider world around me, I developed an empathy for women, and that empathy charged all my work. I saw women and wanted to embody them, to explore and speak their usually trivialized realities. The natural evolution of this passion became my life as a playwright and performer.”
In May, 2023, Word on the Lake Writers’ Festival will feature Hicks as keynote speaker for the event.
W O R K S H O P
Hicks also offers a WORKSHOP that helps us uncover and understand the story that shapes us and the expression of our work throughout our lives. The workshop is called ‘What’s Your Story?’ and is designed for writers who are interested in finding their underlying story and exploring its meaning.
