Joanna’s world renowned plays include: L’Appartement, American Song, Three Little Words (Currency 2019), Switzerland (NHB London, 2018) , True Minds (Currency 2014), Pennsylvania Avenue (Currency 2016), Fury (Currency 2014), Songs for Nobodies (Currency 2010), Day One – A Hotel – Evening (Currency 2014), The Gift (Currency 2011), Rockabye (Currency 2009), The Female of the Species (published NHB 2008), Ninety (Currency 2009), Bombshells (Currency 2004), Rapture (Currency 2002), Nightfall (Currency 1999), Redemption (Currency 1997), Flame, Love Child (Currency 1993), Atlanta (Currency 1990), Honour (Currency 1995; Dramatist’s Play Service, 1999) and Angry Young Penguins (1987). She has also adapted Hedda Gabler (for the State Theatre Company of South Australia) and Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage for Sir Trevor Nunn (Coventry/London).

The inaugural winner of the Mona Brand Award, Joanna was also the recipient of the University of Melbourne’s Arts Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Nominated for AWGIES, AFI awards, the Susan Blackburn Prize and London’s Olivier Awards, she has won the Premier’s Literary Award three times for Honour, Rapture and The Gift. Switzerland won the Sydney Critic’s Play of the Year in 2015. Joanna was awarded a Commonwealth Medal for Services to Playwriting.

Joanna gained an Arts Degree (Honours) from the University of Melbourne and attended the Writing Program at Columbia University in New York.

Her plays have been produced and performed by many of the world’s leading companies and actors including Meryl Streep, Annette Bening, Laura Linney, Kyra Sedgwick, Dame Eileen Atkins, Corin Redgrave, Julia Blake, Imogen Stubbs and many more.