Brock Dramatic Arts Assistant Professor Karen Fricker has written a piece recently published in the Toronto Star about Canadian playwright Norm Foster and the group that has created a festival in his name in St. Catharines.

Fricker writes:

Norm Foster is widely considered Canada’s most produced playwright, whose works receive an average of 150 productions per year.

Some might say that Foster’s work doesn’t need more production incentives. But for Patricia Vanstone and Emily Oriold, it’s exactly Foster’s popularity that makes a festival of his work a good idea.

They’re the executive team behind the Foster Festival in St. Catharines, now in its second summer season.

Foster’s plays are character-driven comedies, most often treating romance, marriage, working relationships or friendship. But, as Vanstone argues, they go deeper too: audiences “leave feeling that they’ve had a great laugh but, if they so desire, they have something they can chew on,” themes like mortality, responsibility, legacy and hope. The festival’s tag line is “humour with heart.”

Continue reading the full article here.