Collection of sketches by Jean-Pierre Martinez
Blackouts is a collection of 12 short and varied sketches linked by the same central theme: forgetting, failing memory, or the gradual blurring of the boundary between reality and illusion. Each scene explores one aspect of this theme through a pair of characters, in styles ranging from the absurd and situational comedy to gentle satire, light fantasy and existential reflection.
Blackouts is more than just a succession of comic scenes: it is also a reflection on what it means to exist without leaving a trace, to love without proof, to live without certainty, and to tell stories without memory. With humour and tenderness, Jean-Pierre Martinez offers a theatre of the ephemeral and the fragile, where laughter is often an elegant way of keeping vertigo at bay.
List of sketches
1 – Vaguely
2 – Comma
3 – Antipathy
4 – Optical Illusion
5 – Black and White
6 – Back to the Future
7 – Confession
8 – Tribute
9 – PIN Code
10 – Childhood Sweethearts
11 – The Forgotten Woman
12 – Blackout
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Analysis
Memory – lost, uncertain, imagined
Whether it is a forgotten PIN code, a botched tribute, a confession with nothing to confess, or an erased identity, each sketch explores the fragility of memory and the fallibility of consciousness. Several characters doubt their own past or reinvent it, suggesting that truth can be subjective and malleable.
🔁 Recurring motifs:
The loop: Several sketches end where they began (The Forgotten Woman, Blackout), following a logic of repetition or cyclical erasure.
The male/female duo: All the sketches are built around a pair of characters, usually on an equal footing, sometimes at odds and sometimes in complicity, allowing for contrasts, shifts and verbal sparring.
Everyday absurdity: An ordinary situation – withdrawing money, paying tribute to someone, running into an acquaintance – quietly slips into strangeness, revealing the comedy inherent in our routines and automatic behaviour.
The loss of temporal or personal bearings: Characters no longer know who they are, where they come from, or even whether they are dead or alive (Vaguely, The Forgotten Woman, Back to the Future…).
Noticeable influences: Beckett, Ionesco and the verbal comedy of Raymond Devos, as well as the sketches of Pierre Desproges and the worlds of Pierre Étaix and Jacques Tati, particularly in their distorted relationship with reality.
🎭 Performance
Requiring very little in the way of sets and props, this collection is ideal for readings, workshops or minimalist productions. It also offers actors the opportunity to explore subtle shifts in tone, silences, listening and comic timing. Each sketch can stand on its own, but together they form a coherent constellation in which the same preoccupations return in ever-changing forms.