Penny Woolcock

Who is Penny Woolcock?

Penny Woolcock is a British filmmaker, opera director, and screenwriter. She was raised in a British community in Montevideo, speaking English and going to English schools.

In 1967, she founded a radical theatre group and was briefly arrested; her parents wanted to send her to Europe for safety. Instead, she fled to Spain with a man from the theatre group and had a baby in Barcelona.

In 1970 she moved to England as a single mother. She did factory work and other jobs. In her thirties she enrolled in a filmmakers' workshop, borrowed film-making equipment, and sold the resulting feature to BBC Channel 4. She was then hired as a director and editor of a current affairs program originating in Newcastle. From there, she went on to feature making. Her first feature as a writer and director was Women in Tropical Places in 1989. Since then she has directed and/or written seven films. She adapted and directed Macbeth on the Estate in 1997.

Her breakthrough film was Tina Goes Shopping, which was a collaborative piece with the real residents of the Gipton estates in Leeds, which was part of what is now known as the Tina Trilogy. Current projects include a production of the John Adams opera Doctor Atomic which she directed for the Metropolitan Opera's 2008–2009 season. She had previously filmed Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer as a feature film. Her most recent film is 1 Day.