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Brown, Diane

Diane Brown
Diane Brown

Award-winning producer, director, and actor, based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was co-founder of Ruby Slippers Theatre in 1989, and since 1998 the Artistic Director. Diane Brown has a BFA from Simon Fraser University, and an MFA in Directing from the University of British Columbia.

She has commissioned many English language translations of contemporary French Canadian plays; and produced and directed their English language premieres in Vancouver: Down Dangerous Passes Road by Michel Marc Bouchard (trans. Linda Gaboriau); The Winners by François Archambault (trans. Shelley Tepperman); After Me by Christian Bégin (trans. Leanna Brodie); Life Savers by Serge Boucher (trans. Shelley Tepperman); I Lost My Husband by Catherine Léger (trans. Leanna Brodie); The Leisure Society and You Will Remember Me by François Archambault (trans. Bobby Theodore); and the west coast English language premiere of Michel Tremblay’s Les Belles-soeurs. The production of the English language translation of After Me won five Jessie Richardson Award nominations including Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Production.

Diane Brown has freelanced across Canada and the United States, and has directed several interdisciplinary performance works that were showcased abroad and at the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa.

Other directorial highlights include award-winning productions of The Waiting Room by American playwright Lisa Loomer (Canadian Premiere); The Cat Who Ate Her Husband by Vancouver playwright, actor, and improviser Drew McCreadie (World Premiere); Trout Stanley by Claudia Dey (Vancouver Premiere); and Hotel Bethlehem by Drew McCreadie. Ruby Slippers Theatre’s production of Daniel MacIvor’s A Beautiful View was remounted at Centaur Theatre.

Under Brown’s artistic direction, Ruby Slippers has created seven full-length new Canadian works, and toured nationally three times. The Company has received forty nominations and sixteen professional theatre awards in the last ten years.

Brown also initiated Ruby Slippers’ The Advance Theatre Festival, an annual week-long festival of dramatic readings featuring five new works over five days written and directed by diverse female identifying and gender non-confirming IBPOC artists, and profiling to under-represented and marginalized playwrights, directors, and actors.

To celebrate the Company’s 25th anniversary, she acted in MacIvor’s Communion in 2013, produced in association with Pacific Theatre. For her leading role as Wallis Simpson in The Duchess by Linda Griffiths in 2015, she was nominated for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role.

Diane Brown actively contributes to the Vancouver cultural community. She leads Theatre Cares Vancouver, a volunteer organization that raises funds and awareness for people living with HIV/aids, was a member of the Langara College Theatre Advisory Committee, and of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatre’s national Advocacy Committee. She was President of the See 7 Performing Arts Society, and for five years was on the steering committee for the Theatre Engagement Project. She is currently a member of the Advisory Board for Vancouver Civic Theatres.

She is a recipient of the national Bra D’Or Award, presented annually by the Playwrights Guild of Canada for championing works by women. She was also a nominee for the 2018 Women of Distinction Award.

Source: Ruby Slippers website.

Last updated 2022-07-18