Jean-Pierre Martinez is a French playwright of Spanish descent whose career followed unconventional paths. He has a solid academic foundation, with degrees in economy and marketing (Sciences Po), Spanish and English literature (Sorbonne), linguistics and semiology (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), and script writing (Conservatoire European d’Ecriture Audiovisuelle). He also played drums in various rock bands, worked as an advertising semiologist for some of the biggest consulting companies, wrote television scripts, taught French in a Texas university, gave screenwriting classes in Paris, and he is now a playwright whose plays are produced on the five continents.

A fierce advocate for the absolute independence of playwrights from institutions claiming to define what modern theatre should be, he decided to make all his plays directly available to theatre companies on his website, in more than ten languages. In that way, he was able to achieve international recognition in just a few years, even reaching, to his great pride, young emerging performing troupes and countries where theatre is a vector for change. His plays are performed all over the world and are studied in lower and upper secondary schools and universities in France and abroad.

Taking his distances from the positions (and sometimes impositions) of what many modern theatre professionals pompously call the “new contemporary dramaturgies”, Jean-Pierre Martinez actively champions popular theatre (in the first meaning of the word), entertaining but not mindless, cheeky but never vulgar, activist but not pontificating, ethics-minded rather than righteous, and never educational or patronising. 

No type of theatre is off-limits or scorned as he explores all types in his writings, albeit with a strong preference for comedy, a genre brought to perfection by Molière but unjustly derided today. “A theatre where one doesn’t laugh must be laughed at” said Brecht, And indeed, if modern theatre is rarely funny, it is, unfortunately, too often laughable …

Making people laugh, however, comes with a certain responsibility. While anything can be turned into comedy, it must be done right. With his plays, Jean-Pierre Martinez strives to return comedy to its rightful place:  as a mirror held to society to confront its own failings and excesses, comedy belongs right alongside drama and tragedy.