Joe Penhall

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Joe Penhall is a playwright and screenwriter. Born in London in 1967, he grew up in Australia before returing to London in his early twenties, where he worked as a news reporter for the Hammersmith Guardian. His first major play was Some Voices for the Royal Court in 1994^{[citation needed]}, which has twice been revived off Broadway.

Penhall won the Laurence Olivier Award, the Evening Standard Award and the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards for Blue/Orange, a play about the dynamics between a young black schizophrenic man and two psychiatrists in a London mental hospital. It premiered at the National Theatre in 2000, directed by Roger Michell, with Bill Nighy, Andrew Lincoln and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the cast. Blue/Orange transferred to the Duchess Theatre, London in the following year.

Also in 2000, Penhall adapted Some Voices for film - directed by Simon Cellan-Jones, it starred Daniel Craig and Kelly Macdonald, and premiered at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight.

Penhall adapted Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love for a 2004 film starring Rhys Ifans and Daniel Craig, and wrote the screenplay for BBC2's BAFTA nominated four-part dramatisation of Jake Arnott's East-End gangster novel The Long Firm.

His next play Dumb Show, a comic attack on the excesses of tabloid journalists, was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, directed by Terry Johnson in 2004. Penhall has said that after writing Blue/Orange -- a 'huge dark play' -- he wanted to write a 'small light play' ^[1]

Landscape With Weapon, about a brilliant young engineer who invents an innovative and devastating weapon of mass destruction, was first performed at the National Theatre in 2007, directed by Roger Michell. The cast included Tom Hollander and Julian Rhind-Tutt.

Penhall has adapted The Road by Cormac McCarthy for the screen (shooting early spring 2008) directed by John Hillcoat and starring Viggo Mortensen.

He has directed at the Royal Court Theatre, and his first short film The Undertaker premiered at the London Film Festival, starring Rhys Ifans.