Martin McDonagh

Martin Faranan McDonagh (/məkˈdɒnə/ mək-DON-ə; born 26 March 1970) is a British-Irish playwright and filmmaker. He is known for his absurdist dark humour which often challenges the modern theatre aesthetic. He has won numerous accolades including an Academy Award, six BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and three Olivier Awards in addition to nominations for five Tony Awards.

His plays, many of which have been produced in the West End and on Broadway, include The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Cripple of Inishmaan (both 1996), The Lonesome West (1997), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001), The Pillowman (2003), A Behanding in Spokane (2010), and Hangmen (2015).

McDonagh won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for Six Shooter and has received six other nominations for his work on In Bruges (2008), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). He directed the black comedy film Seven Psychopaths (2012) and was executive producer on The Second Death (2000) and The Guard (2011).

McDonagh was born on 26 March 1970 in Camberwell, London, to Irish parents. His mother (originally from Killeenduff, Easky, County Sligo) and his father (originally from Leitir Mealláin, Connemara, County Galway) moved back to Galway in 1992, but McDonagh and his brother (writer-director John Michael McDonagh) stayed in London.

Separated into two trilogies, McDonagh's first six plays are located in and around County Galway, where he spent his holidays as a child. The first is set in Leenane, a small village on the west coast of Ireland, and consists of The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996), A Skull in Connemara (1997) and The Lonesome West (1997). His second trilogy is set across the Aran Islands, off the coast of County Galway, and consists of The Cripple of Inishmaan (1996), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001), and The Banshees of Inisheer. The third play was never published, as McDonagh insisted it "isn't any good", though he expressed a desire to return to it when he is older. In 2022, McDonagh directed a film titled The Banshees of Inisherin. The screenplay's resemblance to the play is unclear.

In 1999 he was one of the recipients of the V Europe Prize Theatrical Realities awarded to the Royal Court Theatre (with Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Jez Butterworth, Conor McPherson).

McDonagh's first non-Irish play, The Pillowman, is set in a fictitious totalitarian state and premiered at the Royal National Theatre in 2003, after a reading at the Finborough Theatre in 1995.

A Behanding in Spokane is McDonagh's first play that is set in the United States and it premiered on Broadway in March 2010. Lead actor Christopher Walken was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance as a killer looking for the hand he lost in his youth.