After finishing school in Kikinda, he enrolled and graduated philosophy at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy in 1955. He was at the head of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre from 1985–1999, and before that he had worked as a dramaturge since 1956, as well in Atelje 212 since 1967 to 1985. Since establishment in 1967 to date, Jovan is the artistic director and selector of BITEF festival, longest in the history of international theatre festivals. Since 2001 to 2007, he was the President of the National Commission of Yugoslavia, then Serbia, in UNESCO. He wrote the plays Room for four and House of Silence (with Miroslav Belović), scripts for the Vladimir Slijepčević film Real state of situation, Ward, Where after the rain (shown in Venice, Moscow and Pula), radio plays Windy Roads (in German language, Radio Hamburg), Mechanical secretary and others. Adapted for the stage of The Damned Yard by Ivo Andrić, and together with Belović Discovery, by Dobrica Ćosić. He is the author of novels, several collections of poems, theatrological essays, books of memories, an anthology of plays (Serbian contemporary drama in English, British and American contemporary drama, The shortest plays in the world, etc...) and vocabularies. He has translated plays by Christopher Fry, Bertolt Brecht, Jean Genet, Stoppard, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Marber and the musical Hair. Writer of columns in NIN magazine, (named "Word of the week", since 1986 to this day), two columns a week in the Blic newspaper, (named "Pozorištarije" and "With hands in pockets") and theater news in the Ludus theatre newspapers. As a member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, he was the first person who publicly called for decriminalisation of male same-sex relations ("sodomy laws") in the 1980s. He speaks German, English, French, Spanish and Italian, and studied Chinese.