Jean-Cyrille Merle-Remond, known as Martini
Founder of La Lettre — association & production company
More than thirty years doing two things: preventing accidents before they happen, and proving what people can do. First in the kitchens of a great theatre, then in the food trades, then in a method that links the two. La Lettre is the end of that road.
It all starts in the theatre
From 1989 to 1999 he kept the books and the kitchen of Ariane Mnouchkine's Théâtre du Soleil at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes: ten years feeding, every day, a company known all over the world, between the seriousness of the accounts and creation that never stops. In 1991, invited as an author to a national training course for theatre teachers (French Ministry of Culture / ANRAT), he met Peter Brook. From that meeting came the method he has practised ever since, that of the empty space: all you need is a place, someone who does and someone who watches.
The trade of preventing accidents
Since 2006 he has helped kitchens and food companies make sure nobody gets ill: he trains teams in hygiene rules (the HACCP method), he prepares the files that allow a large kitchen to get its licence, and he comes on site to check that everything is done by the rules. He does the same work for safety at work: looking at each workstation, imagining what could go wrong before it happens, and following the figures. He is currently taking recognised qualifications in this trade (FSSC 22000 auditor, Six Sigma Black Belt).
From this trade, La Lettre has kept its discipline: everything is written down in registers, and we apply the green light rule: you only move on to the next step if the step before is really finished.
A method: the dramatic cards
Over the years, with Dr Pierre Benghozi, child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Hyères, he developed the dramatic cards method, inspired by two great screenwriters, Mankiewicz and Wilder. The principle is simple: for each character, you write on a card what they want, what they know, what they hide; then you play the scene and watch what happens. Open workshops bring it to life: everyone invents a character, writes their scene, and discovers that what they have just done is real know-how, which can be described, watched and proven.
La Lettre, today
In 2026, this road becomes two houses carried by one shared story. The association, based in Burel (Marseille) and Carami (Brignoles), teaches people by having them do: its big training course is building a video game with an AI. What they can do is then written down and signed by professionals, and these papers open doors to work and training. The production company makes the video game "La Lettre" and its engine: an artificial intelligence that can choose the path of the story, but never where it has to arrive.
Each keeps an eye on the other. The theatre gave the method, the risk trade gave the discipline, and the game gives them a playground.
Talk, take part, build
The project is being set up. The door is open.