In addition to being a playwright, Jean-Pierre Martinez is a drummer (he has played in several rock bands), a semiotician, a screenwriter, a teacher, and the author of critical studies and a manual for writing comedies, intended for young authors of all ages. Therefore, we begin with a theoretical question - what is funny or comic? For the French playwright, it is a way of perceiving a life filled with tragedy:

The fact that his plays cross so many boundaries rather surprises Martinez, who considers himself a very French author. ‎

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"To my great amazement and delight, my texts really do travel all over the world. It amazes me that plays that seem exclusively French, even sometimes solely Parisian, can reach places that are very distant from French and even European culture, such as Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia. I have no answer why it happens. I can only be amazed and, of course, happy. It is encouraging that literature travels and is shared beyond cultural differences."‎

What are his impressions of how his works are received in Bulgaria? ‎

‎"About 14 of my plays are being performed or have been performed in Bulgaria", notes the French author. "I have seen 6 or 7 of them. It is different every time. I would not talk about what I did not like, because this is not the way I perceive things. In general, all the productions that I have seen are of a very high level, with excellent actors and often a lot of money has been invested in them. In France, the director usually does everything – he or she takes care of the lighting, the costumes… And here there is a person responsible for the scenography, sometimes specially composed music is heard. All this is very well-maintained, I have seen many beautiful productions in wonderful theaters and large halls.”

By the way, for Martinez, Bulgaria is far from an exotic country and there are not many differences to be seen compared to France. When he comes to Bulgaria, he is among close friends, because in Europe we share one and same culture after all. ‎

Jean-Pierre Martinez is the author of a manual for writing comedies in five acts, a prologue and an epilogue.

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"To write a good comedy, you first need a good plot. I have a command of writing techniques and it is no problem for me to compose lines and dialogues. What I need is a strong enough idea around which to structure a story that is an hour or an hour and a half long. There is no technique for finding ideas. You have to be curious about everything, read newspapers, keep your eyes open. I'm looking for an idea for my next comedy, but I haven't found it yet and maybe I never will."

A good idea for a comedy leads to many twists and turns, and a good comedy is simply a comedy that makes you laugh, the author believes. However, he is interested in humor that is not mocking others - laughing with someone, not at their back. That is why, for example, racism or sexism are unacceptable. However, this does not mean that we cannot talk about everything.

Are there limits to the comic in this case?

"This is something that is difficult to control," the French playwright believes. "It's not so much about the idea as about the words themselves - there are words that used to be no problem, but now we have to be a little more careful. I think that's good. However, we shouldn't go so far as to terrorize and not allow anything to be said. If there is censorship, it should come from me, if I think I'm going to offend someone. There are probably words that I used 10 years ago, and now I would simply replace them with others. Society is evolving. Some things were permissible before, but they are no longer. We should have the right to laugh at everything and to search for the border, but not necessarily to cross it." 

In his famous novel The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco plays out the hypothesis of an existing and irretrievably lost second part of Aristotle's Poetics, dedicated to comedy... What would it say, in your opinion?