Bio

Now Playing:
Beatrice in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING and Portia in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
at Orlando Shakespeare Theatre in Orlando, FL, March 13-April 26, 2009
for more information, go to http://www.orlandoshakes.org
MARNI PENNING is a northern Virginia native and co-founder of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, for whom she has performed over 35 roles in 10 seasons, including Juliet, Kate, Rosalind, Beatrice, and Hamlet. She now resides in New York, where she has appeared on Saturday Night Live (burning a Martha Stewart cookbook on live national television), Guiding Light, All My Children, Law & Order: SVU, The Sopranos, Mona Lisa Smile, onstage in the beat poetry rock musical Subway Train and for The Production Company, with whom she is a founding company member.

Marni has performed steadily on New York stages for the past eight years as well as appearing in several short films; regionally, favorite roles include Peg in Six Years (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival), Luciana in Comedy of Errors and Catherine in Lorenzaccio (Shakespeare Theatre Company, DC), Jane in The Unmentionables, Ashley in After Ashley and Mom in Big Death and Little Death (Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company), Helen in Machinal (American Century Theater), Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (Georgia Shakespeare), Adriana in Comedy of Errors (Folger Shakespeare Theatre and Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival), Mrs. Manningham in Gaslight (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival), Sarah in The Lover (Rep Stage), Myra and Myrna in The Mineola Twins (Human Race Theatre, OH) and Shelby in Steel Magnolias (Wayside Theatre, VA).