Before becoming a playwright, Jean-Claude Grumberg held several jobs including working as a tailor, he takes to the middle part of his play L'Atelier. He discovered drama being an actor in the company. He became a writer in 1968 with Demain, une fenêtre sur rue, and short texts like Rixe which played at the Comédie-Française. He writes about what haunts him since childhood: the death of his father in the Nazi death camps: Maman revient pauvre orphelin, Dreyfus (1974), L'Atelier (1979) and Zone libre (1990).
In 1998, L'Atelier returned to Théâtre Hébertot in Paris, won great success and won the 1999 Molière for best play directory.
In film, he is writer: Les Années Sandwiches, co-writer with François Truffaut for The Last Metro, La Petite Apocalypse of Costa-Gavras, Le Plus Beau Pays du monde by Marcel Bluwal (1999), Fait d'hiverRobert Enrico (1999). For television, he wrote scenarios Thérèse Humbert, Music Hall, by Marcel Bluwal, Les Lendemains qui chantent, by Jacques Fansten et Julien l'apprenti, by Jacques Otmezguine.
He is one of the few contemporary French playwrights live to be studied in school (including L'Atelier). Jean-Claude Grumberg received the Grand Prize of the Académie française in 1991 and SACD Prize in 1999 for lifetime achievement; the Molière's best playwright in 1991 for Zone libre and in 1999 L'Atelier.
Jean-Claude Grumberg is the father of actress Olga Grumberg.
1965: La Grande Oreille by Pierre-Aristide Breal, directed Jacques Fabbri, Théâtre de Paris
1965: L'Envers d'une conspiration by Alexandre Dumas, directed Jacques Fabbri, Théâtre de Paris
1973: En r'venant de l'expo Jean-Claude Grumberg, directed Jean-Pierre Vincent Théâtre Ouvert, Festival d'Avignon Odéon Theatre, Théâtre National de Strasbourg
1982: Night and Day by Tom Stoppard, directed Jacques Rosner, House of Culture André Malraux Reims, Nouveau Théâtre de Nice
