Born in New York and raised in LA, Joe returned to New York in 1987 where the New York Theatre Workshop produced his breakout play, As It Is In Heaven.  A satire about evangelical Christians infiltrating the Republican Party, this play established Joe as one of American theatre’s freshest and most provocative theatre voices.

Following this, Joe's play Voir Dire about criminal justice and race premiered at Seattle Rep, where it was nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Best Play Award of the American Theatre Critics Association, and was produced by dozens of theatres  across the country.

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Joe’s many other works, on subjects ranging from water-boarding and Hurricane Katrina, to real estate speculation, fraudulent science, and life after communism in Eastern Europe have been performed across the U.S. at such theatres as Trinity Rep, the Old Globe, Arena Stage, Primary Stages, and the Cleveland Playhouse.  His plays have also been produced internationally at such theaters as the National Theatre of Turkey, the Vaganten Buhne in Berlin, and Maggio Musicale in Florence.

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In 2009, Joe's play Complicit premiered to great effect at the Old Vic Theatre in London.  More recently, Joe's play Orwell in America transferred from Northern Stage to a sold out run at 59E59 in New York.  Joe's latest play, Twirl, received the 2021 Julie Harris Best New Play Award from the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild

From many years, Joe taught playwriting at Dartmouth College. He now lives in West Orange, NJ with his wife Anne Travers.