After writing a number of plays in a very short period of time, McDonagh has since become a successful screenwriter, winning awards and enjoying box office success with films like Six Shooter, In Bruges, and most recently Seven Psychopaths. His most recently play, A Behanding in Spokane, starred Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken on Broadway.

McDonagh has an astonishingly long list of awards for The Beauty Queen of Leenane. They include: The 1997 Evening Standard Award and the London Critics’ Circle Award for most promising playwright; New York’s Drama Desk, Drama League, Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics’ Circle Awards for best play of 1998; Time magazine’s number one Best of Theater Award. The New York production itself garnered four Tony Awards, and director Garry Hynes made Tony history as the first woman to receive the award for Best Director of a Play.