ARTIST BIO

Karin McCracken is an award-winning writer and performer based in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her most recent work includes the Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit Heartbreak Hotel, the large-scale adaptation Gravity & Grace (co-adapted with Eleanor Bishop), and Yes Yes Yes (co-written with Eleanor Bishop), a show for young people about consent and healthy relationships. Karin co-created the live art performance work Standard Acts in 2021, and is a devisor and performer in the new form theatre company Binge Culture. She is a trained sexual violence prevention educator and uses these skills in her work as solo performer of Yes Yes Yes.

Karin is the Co-Artistic director of EBKM alongside Eleanor Bishop. They make high quality, socially minded, formally innovative contemporary theatre for a range of audiences in New Zealand and abroad, and they develop their work through extensive research and in consultation with audiences, social agencies and academics. Eleanor and Karin were the recipients of the prestigious Bruce Mason Playwriting Award in 2022 for their body of work, the first time in the award's 40 year history that it was awarded to a creative partnership. In December 2024, Gravity & Grace was awarded Production of the Year at the Wellington Theatre Awards, and Karin was awarded Actor of the Year for her work in Gravity & Grace and Heartbreak Hotel.

Karin’s work tours nationally and internationally, and has been translated into Welsh and Catalan. In 2025, further translations will take place in Hungary and Brazil, and be presented in Canada, the USA, Australia, and the UK.