About

Lois Brown is an established multidisciplinary artist with a large body of work, to which she is constantly adding new material, or expanding by building upon her existing creative content. She focused on long-form improvisation during her studies at the University of Alberta. Currently working mainly in theatre and dance, she has a continued commitment to research and skill development.

She is a strong collaborative member of the professional arts community, often working as a choreographer or dramaturg for the projects of others, like Candice Pike’s 21 Poems which was presented at World Dance Alliance’s 2017 Global Dance Summit, and Sarah Joy Stoker’s My heart breaks. Lois directed Perchance Theatre’s production of Our Eliza, and is the writer/director of her highly successful show When the Angel of Death says? How are you… (which was creatively staged in a hospital). She also wrote and directed Drinking again and Sex the rules of. Brown has directed numerous other productions including Ruth Lawrence’s Stable Home and Andy Jones’ An Evening with Uncle Val.

In film, Lois developed and wrote Invisible Me with the NFB, was a writer, director, and performer in a web series called Travel Anywhere, and wrote Heartless Disappearance into Labrador Seas directed by Justin Simms which was an official selection at FIN: Atlantic International Film Festival, the St. John’s Women’s International Film Festival, the Nickel Independent Film Festival, and the Kerry Film Festival. She is also the writer/director of a beloved feature, The Bingo Robbers.

In 2008 while at Magnetic North in Vancouver, she was run over by a vehicle while on a crosswalk, resulting in chronic pain and PTS symptoms. That accident has led Brown to explore entirely new and different approaches and subject matter in her professional arts practice, which continues in her latest work. Originally titled papers improvisation, her new show for which she received an ArtsNL Professional Project Grants Program grant is called I Am a Genius: does anyone here know me? Shorter in-development versions of it have already been performed at the Sound Symposium and to an invited audience at the LSPU Hall. Now Brown is set to premiere the realized show with composer James O’Callaghan at Neighbourhood Dance Works’ Festival of New Dance.

The title is derived from Brown’s interest in the dynamic between exceptionality and commonality. She believes everything is genius.

(Source: http://www.nlac.ca/feature/lois-brown.htm)


Awards & Nominations

Throughout her career, Brown has received a number of awards and honours including Best Play from The Overcast in 2016, the YWCA’s Women of Distinction 2015, the Rhonda Payne Theatre Award managed by ArtsNL in 2011, the NL Joy Award in 2008, Victor Martyn Lynch Staunton Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theatre in 2005, the ArtsNL Artist Achievement in the same year, and she was shortlisted for the Siminovitch Prize in 2004.