Writer& Dramaturge

Penny's stage plays include :

• The President’s Holiday (Hampstead Theatre and Nuffield Theatre Southampton). It has also been translated into Hungarian and presented in Budapest in 2021) - The play is published by Nick Hern Books.

• When we are Rich (Nuffield Theatre, Southampton)

• Burning in Heaven (Old Red Lion)

• Riptide (Weaver Hughes Ensemble, Jerwood Centre)

• Lazarus and Others (Freehand Theatre Co.)

• I Was Shakespeare’s Double (With John Downie, RSC , The Other Place)

Penny's Radio Plays include - (All presented on the BBC)

• In the Keep Net

• Dear Brother…

• Old Man Goya

• Three Days that Shook the World

• Serial Dramatisation of Shadow Baby by Margaret Forster

• Adaptations of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman

• A Chaos of Wealth and Want

Penny continues to write for the stage and continues to do freelance dramaturgical/reading work for a several theatres and competitions.

She is a script reader for RSC and also contributes extensively to Kali Theatre, the Asian Women’s Company.

Penny was born in London. An only child, her parents moved briefly from their small flat to a farm cottage and she spent her first five years blissfully wandering the fields.

Returning to London for school, she went on to win a Scholarship to Girton College, Cambridge where she read English.

Penny began her career working as Assistant to the RSC director John Barton for whom she did literary research and was involved in his productions of Richard II, King John and others.

She later became the RSC’s Publications Officer, writing and editing programmes etc. She then joined the BBC, initially as a TV Drama Script Editor, then briefly as a Researcher and Producer on BBC Radio’s Arts Programme Kaleidoscope.

She then joined BBC Radio Drama and became a Commissioning Editor for the Afternoon Play, and other slots including the Monday Play. She commissioned and developed work from a vast range of writers (some she discovered at the very beginning of their careers, others very established) including Howard Barker, Edward Bond, Nick Dear and Nick Ward. She also directed over sixty plays. She returned briefly to BBC TV as a Producer on the single film slot Screenplay. As an independent film Producer with Leda Serene she produced Siren Spirits, four film dramas by Black and Asian women artists.

As an independent for BBC radio, she directed, among others, Steve Gooch’s award-winning play, McNaughton. Longing to return to the theatre she joined the Nuffield Theatre as Literary Manager, developing new talent.

In 1999 she left the Nuffield to concentrate on her own writing.

[She has served on the Arts Council New Writing Committee and the boards of the Soho Theatre, Temba (the Black Theatre Company) and is now on the board of Kali Theatre. She was also chair of the European Broadcasting Union’s New Plays Committee.]