Kelly Richmond

Kelly Richmond is an artist-scholar, teacher, amateur circus performer, avid flower photographer, part-time cat rescuer, and full-time ghost hunter. Born and raised in Toronto ON, she has since lived in Montréal QC, Ottawa ON, Ithaca NY, London ON, and now East Lansing MI. Kelly has published on queer circus, new materialist performance, and environmental stewardship in theatre education. Her research examines the intersections of queer performance, environmental activism, and gothic aesthetics.

As an artist-scholar, Kelly creates work which explores queer adaptation while combining practice-as-research, community collaboration and artivism. Her works include Climate Change Theatre Action (East Lansing, 2025), Loose Ties (Ithaca 2024), Out of Reach: A Queer Fairy Tale (Ithaca 2023), Haunted Natures, Hidden Environments (Ithaca 2022), eTRASH Lab (Ithaca 2020), Tartuffe (Ithaca 2019), Climates of Change (Ithaca 2017) and In Fair Verona: A Lesbian Dystopic Burlesque(Montreal 2016). In addition to this artistic work, she has co-organized a number of symposia that combine research dissemination, pedagogical praxis workshops, and artistic performance: “The Ithaca Department of Arts and Future: A Coalition and Celebration for the World to Come” (Ithaca 2023), “Re-imagining the Future: A Teach-In on Fostering Environmental Stewardship in Theatre and Performance Education” (CATR 2023), and “Feminist Directions: An Interdisciplinary Symposium of Performance, Power, and Leadership” (Cornell 2019).

Kelly is on leave from MSU for the 2026-2027 academic year.