Jennie Brown has had a distinguished career as an actor, arts administrator, and educator.
As an actor, she has worked professionally on stages in Virginia and North Carolina with extensive credits in the Richmond theater community. Her voice has been heard in numerous regional voice-overs, and she’s appeared on-camera and in radio/television commercials and corporate training films in the Mid-Atlantic.
Now a resident of Coastal Virginia, Jennie has appeared in and directed staged readings for the Listen/Hear series at The Venue on 35th Street in Norfolk.
Jennie was a founding instructor, and later Artistic Director at SPARC (School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community) from 1981- 2009. Under her leadership, SPARC became one of the largest community-based performing arts training programs for young people in the country. She is a recipient of the YWCA Award for Outstanding Women in the Arts, as well as the Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts – Lifetime Achievement for her arts education leadership in the Greater Richmond metropolitan community.
Her work as an educator also includes Theatre IV (VA Rep), Richmond Parks & Recreation, and she’s been a private acting/speech coach in Richmond, VA. In Coastal Virginia, she was a guest instructor for The Governor’s School in Norfolk. Since 2012, Jennie has been adjunct faculty in the Humanities Division/Communication Studies and Theater at Tidewater Community College/Virginia Beach, where she has taught Acting, Voice and Diction, and Film Appreciation.
Jennie is a member of The Z Playwrights at Zeiders American Dream Theater. Her plays developed there include Closed Loop, Patience First (performed at The Z’s Spring 2023 Fringe Festival), and The Lessons (selected for a staged reading at their Proteus Festival of New Works in Fall, 2023.) She is also member of the Virginia Playwrights Forum and an advisory committee member for Blue Moon Plays.
She holds an M.F.A. in Theater/Performance from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a
B.A. in Theater from University of Mary Washington.