Jane Martin is the pen name of a playwright who has been active from 1981 to the present, whose real identity remains unknown.
Martin's plays include Anton in Show Business, Back Story, Beauty, Coup/Clucks, Cementville, Criminal Hearts, Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage, Vital Signs, Keely and Du and Talking With...[1] Martin's Keely and Du won the 1994 American Theater Critics Association New Play Award[2] and was a finalist for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize.
[3] Martin has been a longtime collaborator of former Actors Theatre of Louisville artistic director Jon Jory, who has directed the premieres of all of Martin's plays and serves as Martin's occasional spokesman.
[4][5] Jory has refused to divulge any information about Martin, other than that they are a native of Kentucky, and that "whoever writes these plays feels that they would be unable to write them" if their identity were revealed.
[4] Other theories about Martin's identity include former Actors Theatre of Louisville executive director Alexander Speer, former Actors Theatre literary manager Michael Bigelow Dixon, and former intern Kyle John Schmidt.