About me

“The world’s gone bonkers. I feel like I’m at a party where everybody’s drunk and I’ve not had a drop.”

That’s the first line of my first play, Strangeways. Dot lives in Salford on the eighteenth floor with her cat, Tiptoes. She wishes Tiptoes would brew up now and then. The lack of opposable thumbs is a problem… so’s the arrival of Dot’s dead husband.

I’m Joshua Val Martin, a queer playwright and screenwriter, based in Manchester.

My earliest plays grew out of Northern working-class life and my reluctance to leave these stories inside social realism. So: a sex worker kidnaps her neighbour’s son; a woman sits down and is unable to stand up for a year; an unemployed man takes on a one-way mission to Mars. I’m drawn to characters with dangerous wants, tiny conflicts that rapidly escalate, and the seemingly pedestrian tipping into the strange.

FOR THE STAGE

My work spans speculative drama, dark comedy, musicals, memoir and magic realism. This Is Not America received a 2017 Bruntwood Prize Commendation; my claustrophobic horror play I Want To Be Who You Need Me To Be was developed with Silent Uproar and the National Theatre Studio. I’ve written the book and lyrics for two original full-length musicals for the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

My autobiographical play With Love, Mr. Gay turns a homophobic death threat over some moved bins into cabaret, verbatim interviews and a personified Buddha statue. It won the WriteForTheStage Prize for Best New Writing at the 2024 Greater Manchester Fringe. In 2026, Factory International produced work-in-progress performances of my fourth memoir play, 10 Hours in Kraków.

FOR THE SCREEN

I’ve written on commission for Sky, and Provenance - a television black comedy about an accidental art forger - is in development with Diane Shorthouse at Evolutionary Films. I wrote and directed Condensation, a queer magic-realist short film which premiered at HOME cinema in 2026.

PROCESS & BACKGROUND

I was the first in my family to attend university, completing a Music MusB and History MA. My historical training and work as co-director of queer arts and heritage company IAP:MCR led to another strand of my practice, approaching work through interviews, oral history and participatory making. Great Indecencies is a fantastical verbatim thriller drawn from older gay men’s testimony; Today the Streets Are Ours is a comedy with music written for the Royal Exchange Theatre, with music from East Manchester community groups.

I trained on the Royal Exchange Theatre and Soho Theatre playwriting programmes, on placement with RTYDS at the New Vic Theatre with Theresa Heskins, and spent a year developing work with English Touring Theatre.

BEYOND WRITING

I’m also a musician with Sherpa K, and founder of Free Manchester Walking Tours and the LGBT+ Manchester Walking Tour.

Representation: Giles Smart at United Agents.