Lou Cope is a dance and theatre dramaturg and facilitator who has worked with companies and individuals in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Malta, Turkey, Portugal, Abu Dhabi and across the UK. As well as working with artists, Lou works as a dramaturg to organisations, is Dramaturg in Residence at South East Dance and founder of CoAD - The Centre of Applied Dramaturgy (www.thecoad.org).

Current or recent artistic collaborations include: Garry Stewart on Australian Dance Theatre’s Supernature; Aakash Odedra on the Amnesty International Freedom of Speech and ACTA Award-winning #JeSuis; English National Ballet’s ‘My First Ballet’ Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty; Embrace by George Williamson and Peter andThe Wolf by Ruth Brill (both for Birmingham Royal Ballet); Gary Clarke on The Troth (winner of Herald Angel and Lustrum Awards), COAL (UK Theatre and Critics' Choice awards), and the forthcoming Wasteland; Mele Broome on VOID (winner of Total Theatre Award for Dance); Rachel Mars and Nat Tarrab on the Samuel Beckett Prize winning Roller.

She has previously worked with Phoenix Dance Theatre, Scottish Dance Theatre, les ballets c de la b (BE), Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (BE) and Damien Jalet (BE/FR) on the double Olivier Award, and Benois Prize for Dance, winning Babel (words) designed by Antony Gormley – now in its 10th year of global touring, and dramaturgical consultant on Cherkaoui and Gormley's Sutra.

Lou is also a Practice Dramaturg – working with artists to develop their practice outside of productions. Currently she is working with Daniela Cardim, Simone Mousset, Esther Richardson and Roísín Stack.She is also a published writer, a workshop leader, and host of Downtime, the podcast series talking to artists about their responses to Covid, their processes and their work.