A selection of theatre sketches and short scenes by French playwright Jean-Pierre Martinez, available in English. These collections range from comedy and absurd humour to social satire, dark comedy and meta-theatre.
Many of these short plays and sketches are written for two actors, making them particularly suitable for drama schools, acting classes, workshops, auditions and small theatre groups. Other collections offer larger or more flexible casts.
Browse the collections below to discover short scenes for performance, scene study and acting practice. Open each title to read the synopsis, access the text and find information about performance rights.
For several decades now, heatwaves have been occurring one after another, ever earlier, longer and more severe. Heat “records” are broken year after year. Humanity seems to be rushing towards its own destruction, unable to change course in order to avoid this looming apocalypse. This implacable mechanism is the very mechanism of tragedy: we already know that it will end badly, but we can do nothing to prevent it...
At the counter, at the time for taking stock, a woman claiming to be an author shares significant moments of her life with the bar owner. These fanciful tales come to life on stage in the bar's room.
The ups and downs of the noble profession of acting, portrayed through a series of around fifteen short scenes that humorously highlight the quirks and pitfalls of what might also be considered the oldest profession in the world.
Like black holes, blackouts open into strange and unknown parallel universes…
A sketch comedy in the form of a literary game. Each of the fifteen two-character scenes in this collection begins with the …
Dramedies by Jean-Pierre Martinez If the world’s a stage, the play is often little more than a flop. Its author remains unknown, …
A comedy made up of sketches that humorously tackle ever-relevant topics, starting from this tragicomic observation: when we stay still for too long, we eventually find ourselves somewhere else without realising it, because the world around us has changed...
A man and a woman in their garden. Are they the first or the last? Are they even a couple? Only God would know if He weren't already dead... A comedy in sketches for one or more couples.
For real and for fun by Jean-Pierre Martinez While it can sometimes be hard to tell the real from the fake, there’s …
About the exciting adventure of living together. Sketchs
Hitman is a little-known profession, but one of public utility, and very much a career for the future, especially in times of crisis. At a café table, characters from this noble trade cross paths with clients whose motives are as varied as they are surprising. And you? If you could eliminate just one person on this earth with impunity, would you do it? And who would you choose ?
A sketch comedy about time, life, death, love, and the eternal cycle...
If an old suitcase could speak, it might have some funny stories to tell... 10 sketchs
To work or not to work, that is the question. During a break for electronic cigarettes, a few workaholics exchange hazy remarks.
From prehistory to the end of the world, a few snapshots of our insignificant lives. A sketch comedy
Contemporary fables about the world as it is going… and, above all, as it is not going. Through a series of seemingly self-contained short sketches that nevertheless echo one another, strangely human animals and men on the verge of losing their humanity question their troubled existence and their uncertain future. A political yet humorous reflection on the fragility of the human condition and on the dangers that threaten our democracy today.
In a café across the street from a hospital, a decidedly odd landlord serves and observes the fate of his customers looking for hearts to steal… for a transplant or even a relationship.
In the lobby of a building, between the mailboxes and the entry code panel, strange characters cross paths without always understanding each other...
Sidewalk Chronicles by Jean-Pierre Martinez On the sidewalk of a street, strange stories unfold… 14 sketchs (2 or 4 characters per sketch) …
A theatre can also be the setting for funny stories where the theme... is the theatre itself. 28 very short scenes, each no longer than a page.
Sketches… to die of laughter
In adulthood, our lives are not always as we had dreamed them to be at twenty. Conversely, the idealised memory of our twenties is often quite distant from the reality of our youth. Nestled between our dreamt lives and our actual life is the nostalgia for all the possibilities. The eternal question remains: could we really have lived a different life, or was it all written in advance? This bittersweet comedy sketches, in delicate strokes, the tragicomic portrait of a few characters with thwarted destinies.