Martin Crimp

Martin Crimp was born in the UK in 1956 and began writing for theatre in the  1980s. His ground-breaking play, Attempts on her Life (1997), describing in 17 scenarios the different lives of the absent central character Anne, established his international reputation and has been translated into over 30 languages.

His other plays include: Not one of these people (2022), When we have sufficiently tortured each other (2019), Men Asleep (2018), The Rest Will be Familiar To You From Cinema (2013, Theater heute best foreign play of the year), In the Republic of Happiness (2012), Play House (2012), The City (2008), Fewer Emergencies (2005, receiving Italy’s Premio Ubu), Cruel and Tender (2004, written for director Luc Bondy), Face to the Wall (2002), The Country (2000), Attempts on her Life (1997), The Treatment (1993, winner of the John Whiting Award), Getting Attention (1992), No One Sees the Video (1991), Play with Repeats (1989), Dealing with Clair (1988) and Definitely the Bahamas (1987).

He has worked with several of Europe’s outstanding theatre directors: including Thomas Ostermeier for The City, the late Luc Bondy for The Country and Cruel and Tender, Katie Mitchell for many plays including Men Asleep and The rest will be familiar from cinema — both for Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg — as well as with Marcial di Fonzo Bo for In the Republic of Happiness (Théâtre de Chaillot 2014) and Daniel Jeanneteau, whose French language production of The rest will be familiar… was produced in 2019 by the Festival d’Avignon.

His work is characterised by a restless search for new forms, leading him to engage with many classic texts, both as translator (he is a translator of, for example, Genet, Marivaux, Koltès and Ionesco) — as well as by radically re-writing plays by Molière and Rostand, his re-conception of Cyrano de Bergerac (2022) being performed to great critical acclaim in London and New York (BAM), and, in German translation, on the main stage of Vienna’s Burgtheater.

His understanding of music, and his desire to integrate music into drama, has led him to create four operatic dramas set to music by composer George Benjamin: Into the little hill (2006), Written on skin (2012), Lessons in love and violence (2018) and Picture a day like this (2023). Among other musical collaborations are the song-cycle Zauberland (2018) with Bernard Foccroulle, written in dialogue with Schubert and Heine’s Dichterliebe (Bouffes du Nord, 2019) — and lyrics, drawn from his plays, for Roald van Oosten’s 2012 EP, 100% Happy.

2022 saw Martin perform on stage for the first time in his own one-man-show Not one of these people — a text written during the Covid pandemic. Directed by Québecois director Christian Lapointe, this exploration of the limits of a theatre- writer’s imagination has been seen in Québec City, Montreal, London and Berlin, where Martin was invited as part of the Schaubühne’s 2024 Festival of International New Drama (FIND).

In 2020 he was awarded the Nyssen-Bansemer Theatre Prize.

In addition, we have been able to see Atemptats contra la seva vida (2005), The country (El camp) (2005) i La ciutat (2011) in Sala Beckett