Penny Black

Penny Black is an award-winning translator (from German), playwright and dramaturg. Her love of theatre started in Vienna, where she lived for five years and completed her acting training. She has translated plays for the Royal Court, Gate Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, Arcola Theatre and the National Theatre amongst others. Her translation of Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek’s SPORTSPLAY toured the UK during the 2012 Olympics and was read in its five-hour entirety as a Cultural Olympic Pop-Up event. She is a visiting lecturer on translation for performance at Goldsmith’s.

Her first original play MAKING BABIES, AN EMBRYONIC FARCE was translated into German and premiered in 2004 in Heilbronn, Germany; SUDDEN SILENCE at the Arcola Theatre in 2009. In 2018, the Gustav Klimt centenary year, the Belvedere Museum in Vienna commissioned her to write a one-woman play about Klimt’s life partner, Emilie Flöge.  BELOVED MUSE was performed at the Belvedere Museum in German and the English-language version toured globally before coming to the Royal Academy of Arts and the Barbican in the UK. She followed this with ALMA WHO? about Alma Mahler, which toured Austria in the summer of 2021 and went to Australia and NZ in the winter. Her third play for the same performer entitled SELFIES WITH A GIANTESS premiered at the Josephinum Museum in Vienna in May 2023. Her audio play BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, based on the book THE GIFT OF ALZHEIMERS by Maggie La Tourelle and starring Juliet Stephenson and Jane Lapotaire, is available on Audible. Her adaptation of Betool Khedairi’s novel ABSENT premiered at the Voila! Festival in London in November 2025 and has been invited to tour nationally and internationally.

Penny’s work as a dramaturg includes the Barbican/ Sydney Theatre’s production of Julia Leigh’s AVALANCHE and working with Simon McBurney of Complicité on his MAGIC FLUTE for the Dutch National Opera/English National Opera, with Beverly Andrews on her eco-opera WATER and with Nina Atesh on her play, IN LEAGUE WITH THE DEVIL about Hitler’s so-called psychic, Jan Hanussen.

Penny is a Royal Literary Fund Writing for Life Fellow.