Dates

• Existence: Active 1993 - 2021

Biography

Liz Arratoon is a British journalist and circus critic.

Liz first fell in love with the circus after a visit to Bertram Mills Circus when she was a child. Her interest in light entertainment, was also fuelled by many television programmes on the subject, she watched while growing up.

Between 1993 and 2014, Liz worked as the circus critic for The Stage newspaper in the UK, championing the art form at a time when no other journalists were interested in it. She was the first British journalist covering the Monte-Carlo International Circus Festival for a national newspaper, a role that she carried out for eighteen years.

In 2005, she was the only circus critic on a circus industry panel organised by the Circus Arts Forum at the National Theatre in London and she has been part of many circus festivals judging panels including; the first ever Edinburgh Circus Festival in 2012, the Circus Maximus circus competition for young artists in London in 2013 and the European Youth Circus Festival in Wiesbaden in 2014. Liz has also been a member of the marking panel for the degree students at the National Centre for Circus Arts in the UK.

Liz has also contributed her expertise to many documentaries in circus including: When the Circus Comes to Town-BBC4 documentary, By the Light of the Stars-Timeshift documentary, about Circa director Yaron Lifschitz for ABC TV in Australia, and to Last Word on BBC Radio 4. She has also written articles on circus for the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, Spectacle magazine in the US, the Southbank Centre and The London International Mime Festival.