Martin Sherman

Early life

Sherman was an only child, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Russian Jewish immigrants, Julia (née Shapiro) and Joseph T. Sherman, an attorney. Growing up in Camden, New Jersey, he was first introduced to the theater at age six, when he saw a pre-Broadway version of Guys and Dolls (1950) starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Sherman's parents encouraged his passion. In an interview with London Times writer Sheridan Morley in 1983, Sherman recalled, "At 12 I joined the Mae Desmond Children's Players and went all around Pennsylvania being a tall dwarf in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." As a young teen, Sherman despised school, but consoled himself by often taking the bus into Philadelphia to see plays. He also traveled to New York City once a year to visit an aunt who shared his love of theater. "I was the only kid in junior high school to have seen Camino Real," he told interviewer Matt Wolf.

In 1956 Sherman enrolled at Boston University College of Fine Arts, where he earned a BFA in dramatic arts. Upon graduating in 1960, he moved to New York City where he joined the Actors Studio to study under the legendary director Harold Clurman. Though he would soon abandon his acting career to pursue writing full-time, Sherman credits this experience with shaping his technique as a playwright, explaining "all my plays are written for actors rather than the directors or critics that my contemporaries seem to write for." After spending several years in New York, Sherman was appointed playwright in residence at Mills College in Oakland, California, where his rock musical, A Solitary Thing, premiered in 1963.

Professional career

Sherman returned to New York City in the mid-1960s where he premiered Fat Tuesday (1966), Next Year in Jerusalem (1968), and The Night Before Paris (1969). Things Went Badly in Westphalia,—which takes its name from a line in Candide by Voltaire— was next, and became Sherman's first published play when the dramatic rock musical was included in The Best Short Plays of 1970. In the 1970s, Sherman traveled to London where he worked with the founding members of the infamous Gay Sweatshop.

After more than a decade of writing plays, Sherman found widespread fame in 1979 with his first blockbuster hit, Bent. First produced in London's West End starring Ian McKellen, the play tells the story of Max, a gay man in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. After Max and his boyfriend are forced to flee the city following the Night of the Long Knives, the two live in hiding for two years before being captured by the gestapo and sent to a concentration camp. The play was considered extremely controversial, both for its violence and its assertion that homosexuals received worse treatment than Jews during the Holocaust. Despite the uproar, Bent transferred to Broadway, where it became an instant hit and was nominated for a Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Following the success of this production, Sherman claimed to have gotten everything he wanted from New York City and promptly moved to London, where he has lived since 1980.

Despite his status as an expatriate, Sherman continued to write successfully for both the British and the American stage. His most recent success came from his re-write of the book for the musical The Boy from Oz, based on Peter Allen's life and career, earning him a second Tony nomination. He has also written two collections of plays dealing with gay themes, and found success in the genre of one-woman plays with Rose, which was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play when it premiered in London in 2000. Later that year, the show transferred to Broadway where it starred Olympia Dukakis.

In 2003, Franco Zeffirelli directed Sherman's adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's play, Right You Are, if You Think So. The pair retitled the work Absolutely! {perhaps} when it premiered at the Wyndham Theatre on London's West End where it was nominated that year for a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival. Following that critical acclaim, Sherman also premiered stage adaptations of the novels A Passage to India by E.M. Forster and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone by Tennessee Williams. He also found success as a screenwriter in the 1990s, his most successful film having been adapted from his own play, Alive and Kicking (known in the UK as Indian Summer) and directed by Nancy Meckler. Sherman also adapted Bent for the big screen in 1997 with the help of director Sean Mathias and starring such actors as Clive Owen, Ray Fiennes, Ian McKellen, and Mick Jagger.

Other film titles include Clothes in the Wardrobe in 1992 (released in the US as The Summer House, 1993), an adaptation Alice Thomas Ellis's novel, as well as a collaboration with Franco Zeffirelli on Callas Forever (2002), a biopic of opera star Maria Callas. Sherman also produced The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003), a made-for-TV movie of his earlier stage adaptation and Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005), the tale of an eccentric World War I widow, Laura Henderson who buys the old Windmill Theatre in London and relaunches it as a venue for female all nude revues. The latter starred Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins, and Christopher Guest, and earned Sherman a nomination for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Theatre Productions

• A Solitary Thing, with music by Stanley Silverman, Oakland, California, Mills College, 9 Sep 1963.
• Fat Tuesday, New York, Herbert Berghof Playwrights Foundation, 1966.
• Next Year in Jerusalem, New York, Herbert Berghof Playwrights Foundation, 8 Jun 1968.
• Change, (libretto), New York, BMI Music Theatre Workshop, 1969.
• The Night Before Paris, New York, Actors Studio, 1969; Edinburgh, Traverse Theatre, 1970.
• Things Went Badly in Westphalia, Storrs, University of Connecticut, 1971.
• Passing By, New York, Playwrights Horizons, 5 Mar 1974; London, Almost Free Theatre, 9 Jun 1975.
• New York! New York!, contributor, New York, Playwrights Horizons, 26 Apr 1975.
• Cracks, Waterford, CT, National Playwrights Conference, Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, 31 Jul 1975; Oldham, Coliseum Theatre, 10 Oct 1981.
• Rio Grande, New York, Playwrights Horizons, 11 Nov 1976.
• Blackout, New York, Ensemble Studio Theatre, 1978.
• Bent Waterford, CT, National Playwrights Conference, Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, 4 Aug 1978; London, Royal Court Theatre, 3 May 1979; New York, New Apollo Theatre, 2 Dec 1979.
• Messiah, London, Hampstead Theatre, 9 Dec 1982; New York, Manhattan Theatre Club, 11 Dec 1984.
• When She Danced, Guildford, UK, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, 27 Nov 1985; New York, Playwrights Horizon, 19 Feb 1990.
• A Madhouse in Goa, London, Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 28 Apr 1989; New York, Second Stage, 18 Nov 1997—comprises A Tale for a King and Keeps Rainin' All the Time.
• Some Sunny Day, London, Hampstead Theatre, 11 Apr 1996.
• Rose, London, Royal National Theatre, 24 Jun 1999.
• Absolutely! {perhaps} (adapted from Right You Are, if You Think So by Luigi Pirandello), Wyndham Theatre, London, UK, 2003.
• A Passage to India (adapted from the novel by E.M. Forster), Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, NY, 2004.
• Aristo, Chichester Festival Theatre, West Sussex, UK, 11 Sep 2008.
• Onassis (formerly Aristo), Novello Theatre, London, UK, 12 Oct 2010.
• Gently Down the Stream, The Public Theater, New York, NY, 14 Mar 2017

Films

• Alive and Kicking aka Indian Summer, Channel Four Films, 1997
• Clothes in the Wardrobe, (adapted from the novel by Alice Thomas Ellis), BBC Films, 1992; US Release as The Summer House, 1993
• Bent, Channel Four Films, 1997
• Mrs. Henderson Presents, 2005
• Callas Forever, (with Franco Zeffirelli), 2002

Television

• Don't Call Me Mama Anymore, CBS, 1972
• The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (adapted from the novel by Tennessee Williams), Showtime Networks, 2003

Acting roles

• Indian Summer (1996)

Publications

• Bent, S. French, 1979
• Messiah, Amber Lane, 1982
• Cracks, S. French, 1986
• When She Danced, Amber Lane, 1988; S. French, 1988
• A Madhouse in Goa, Amber Lane, 1989; S. French, 1998
• Some Sunny Day, Amber Lane, 1996
• Rose, Methuen, 1999
• "Things Went Badly in Westphalia," in The Best Short Plays of 1970, 1970
• "Passing By," in Gay Plays, Volume 1, 1984