Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and educated at Boston University, Sherman was resident at Playwrights Horizon in New York from 1976 to 1977 and has lived in London since 1990. His plays have been produced in over 45 countries.

Many of Martin's earlier plays - including Passing By, Soaps, Cracks, Rio Grande and When She Danced - were produced in New York at Playwrights Horizons. Martin's play Messiah was done at Manhattan Theatre Club and his play A Madhouse In Goa was produced by Second Stage Theatre.

For the last 20 years or so, he's been living in London, where a lot of his plays have premiered. Many of these plays have also been seen throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

He's probably best known for the play Bent, which was a Tony nominee for Best Play in 1980 and won the Dramatists Guild's Hull-Warriner Award. It's been produced in 35 countries, been adapted by Martin for a movie version and was even recently turned into a ballet in Brazil.

Sherman's play Bent, about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals was one of the earliest plays to portray gay people in a sympathetic and non-sensational light and it truly opened the eyes of the young and naïve theatregoer.

His play Rose, that was produced by Lincoln Center Theater at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, and performed by the Royal National Theatre, Cottesloe Stage, was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 2000 (1999 season) for Best New Play.

He adapted Luigi Pirandello's play Absolutely (perhaps) into a new version that was performed at the Wyndham Theatre and was nominated for 2004 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Revival of 2003. His most recent adaptation is E.M. Forster's A Passage to India.