Collection of Sketches by Jean-Pierre Martinez
Sidewalk Chronicles brings together a series of short sketches, cut like street snapshots, where humour blends with the absurd, burlesque with the tragic, and clear-sightedness with fantasy. In a style that is at once popular and subtly philosophical, Jean-Pierre Martinez captures the voices from the margins, the clashes between social classes, the unlikely encounters on the pavement of an imaginary city… yet one that feels all too familiar.
These sketches — written for two, sometimes three characters — rely on lively, offbeat dialogues, often funny, always exposing a fault line in society, in language, or in the very identity of those who speak. In what might be seen as a modern form of social commedia dell’arte, each character wears a mask (the homeless man, the banker, the fortune-teller, the invisible man…), but lets it crack within just a few minutes.
Each sketch can be performed independently, in any order, as a stand-alone piece. But taken together, they also form a coherent whole: a street theatre where the asphalt itself becomes stage, backstage, and battleground between the intimate and the social, the visible and the invisible, humour and the harshness of reality.
The palette is broad — from wordplay and verbal comedy (The Right Price, Pascal’s Wager) to metaphysical absurdity (A Shadow of the Street), from situational burlesque (A Good Sweep) to biting social satire (The Right Number, On the Street…).
Recurring Themes
Exclusion and precariousness, often treated with dark humour but without pity or miserabilism
Power relations, inverted, ridiculed, or subverted
Impossible communication, with its misunderstandings, silences, and absurd tones
The street as a theatre of social paradoxes: a place of passage, abandonment, or unexpected encounters
Social invisibility — metaphorical or literal — of the marginalised
Work, with its abuses, absurdities, and comic subversions
Belief, fate, and chance, approached through fortune-telling, the lottery, or Pascal’s wager
👤 Casting and Staging
2 to 3 characters per sketch
Flexible casting (roles can be played by men or women, or even by adults playing children)
Average duration of a sketch: 5 to 10 minutes
Ideal for: ensemble shows with quick costume changes, street theatre and public space interventions, theatre workshops (schools, community centres, drama schools), short formats in festivals or as curtain-raisers.
List of sketches
- At the End of the Street
- Career Plans
- The Street Belongs to Everyone
- Like Clockwork
- The Right Price
- The Man on the Street
- The Right Number
- Second Chance
- On the Street
- The Protest for Nobody
- Out with the Broom
- Pascal’s Wager
- A Good Sweep
- A Shadow of the Street
All the texts available on this site can be downloaded for free. However, performance rights, which constitute fair compensation for the author’s work, are a legal obligation. Whether you are an amateur or a professional, you must request authorization to perform the play and pay the corresponding royalties for the production. To get in touch with Jean-Pierre Martinez and ask an authorization to represent one of his works: Contact form.
Download the entire collection free of charge (PDF)
