Martha Clarke is a co-founder of Crowsnest and was a member of Pilobolus Dance Theatre from 1972-1978. She has been a recipient of grants from the Guggenheim, Jerome, and Rockefeller Foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts.

In recent years, Clarke has created several works for Music-Theatre Group. The 1982 production, A Metamorphosis in Miniature, won an Obie Award. The Garden of Earthly Delights, produced in 1984, won a Drama Desk Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics' Award. Clarke is the recipient of a 1986 Obie for Vienna: Lusthaus, one of the winners of The Best New American Plays of the 1986 Off-Broadway season. Another of her works, The Hunger Artist, also received four Obies. Her latest work, Miracolo d'Amore, was performed at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, and at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre in New York.