Jean-Baptiste Sastre studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique from 1990 to 1993. In 1995, he staged his first play Histoire vécue du roi Toto based on Antonin Artaud at the Théâtre de la Bastille. During his career, he has staged plays by Genet, Duras, Marlowe, Büchner, Apollinaire, Bernanos, Weil, Péguy, Giono and Semprún. He has worked with actors such as Nathalie Richard, Hiam Abbass, Denis Podalydès and Sylvester Groth as well as with the artists Sarkis and Boltanski. In 2005, he was awarded the Villa Médicis Prize and researched Elizabethan theater in London. In 2010, he staged The Tragedy of King Richard II in the Cour d'Honneur of the Palais des Papes at the Avignon Festival.
From 2013 to 2017, he directed the international project Phèdre les oiseaux with Hiam Abbass, which was realized with homeless people and street children in Berlin, Los Angeles, New York, Palestine and Israel. Since 2017, he has been working with Hiam Abbass on a theater trilogy about the social challenges of the 20th century: La France contre les Robots by Georges Bernanos (Avignon 2018), Plädoyer für eine neue Zivilisation by Simone Weil (Avignon 2019) and Notre Jeunesse by Charles Péguy (Avignon 2021). In 2022-2024, he initiated an intergenerational reading project on L'Écriture ou la vie by Jorge Semprún with schoolchildren and senior citizens. In 2023, he presented the first stage version with Hiam Abbass at the Festival Off d'Avignon. Schreiben oder Leben will be shown at the Gorki in April 2025.
