Martin Gerald Sherman (born December 22, 1938) is an American dramatist and screenwriter best known for his 20 stage plays which have been produced in over 60 countries. He rose to fame in 1979 with the production of his play Bent, which explores the persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust. Bent was a Tony nominee for Best Play in 1980 and won the Dramatists Guild's Hull-Warriner Award. It was adapted by Sherman for a major motion picture in 1997 and later by independent sources as a ballet in Brazil. Sherman is an openly gay Jew, and many of his works dramatize "outsiders," dealing with the discrimination and marginalization of minorities whether "gay, female, foreign, disabled, different in religion, class or color." He has lived and worked in London since 1980. Life and career 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). 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. "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 studied at the Actors Studio under the legendary director Harold Clurman. Sherman credits this experience with shaping his technique as a playwright, explaining "all my plays are written for actors". 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 wrote Fat Tuesday (1966), Next Year in Jerusalem (1968), and The Night Before Paris (1969). Things Went Badly in Westphaliawhich takes its name from a line in Voltaire's Candide was next,