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Martin de Maat passed away last week.
Martin was a sweet soul who taught at Second City. There are otherplaces on the internet which will better record his achievements than I could here, but I will take this time to recount my memories of Martin.
Martin was my teacher for Level 2 at Second City. He told us that improv was like doing the Hokey-Pokey dance; you put your whole self in, you take your whole self out, you put your whole self in and you shake it all about. Try it; it really works. At the time I was spending a great deal of time at Second City; I was taking classes, working at the Blockbuster across the street, and working in the souvenir booth at SC.
In class, he divided us up into about 4 separate groups and had us all work on a song based on a single theme. My group came up with about the lamest song ever in the history of Man (based on the idea that we were all shirts and we would sing about ourselves... it was like "Bye, Bye, Bye" minus the rhythm, melody, lyrics, and singing. Oh, god that song was awful). We did it in class and we all laughed at the lame-ass job we did with it. Martin made us do it in our class show. We were horrified.
I spoke with him after class and asked if we could do another one. He asked me why. We told him that we were just kidding around with that one and we didn't mean for that one to be our "real" song. He told me, and the rest of the class, that everything in class mattered and our work was Our Work all the time. We always have to stand by it. We ended up doing the song in the show. It was awful, but man, did I stop fucking around in class (I was a "Friends" t-shirt, by the way. What do you want? It was '96.)
In 1996, during a show day (class shows were held all day in the ETC at the time) I was just hanging out watching shows when Martin walked in with Joe Flaherty (from Toronto SC and, of course SCTV (remember Count Floyd? That was the best.)). Martin introduced me to Joe and they asked me to run across the street and pick up a copy of the Sunday Trib for them and meet them in the front lobby. I did (they paid for the paper) and on the front bar they took out the Tempo Section. They wanted to read the article on the film "Secrets & Lies" (directed by Mike Leigh, the film was mostly improvised with Leigh telling the actors what his/her part in the story was and they each developed their own characters.) Then, I was about to leave (you know when you feel like "Well, my work here is done, I guess...) when Martin engaged me in their
conversation. So, there I was, with Martin De Maat and Joe Flaherty discussing the problems and benefits of improvising a movie and techniques thereof. That was so good, one of my favorite memories of SC.
At the beginning of class, Martin usually had us "walk in the space" for a bit which was a very good idea since we had class in what is now called "Donny's Skybox." It wasn't as nice as it is now. We did this and then he would add layers to it; walk like someone else in the room, walk though jello, etc... we all would do it and snicker and sorta just do it since Martin wanted us to without taking anything from it. I realized the other morning that Pat Shay, John Mulhern and I have subconsciously begun every rehearsal for PantsHappy 2: Electric Pantaloons with "walking in the space." We don't say, "Hey, let's do this!" but one of us usually begins walking and everyone else just joins in and the next thing you know we're doing a show.
When my level was over, I spoke with Martin and thanked him for the class. I called him sensei. He paused for a moment and then whispered, "Thank you." And we hugged. Then he yelled at me to call my mother.
Martin always told my class to have respect for the place we perform in; be it a stage, an extra room (we were complaining about our classroom) or the back of a bar. I took that to heart. When I was first on a team at ImprovOlympic there was no intern program and the cleaning guy only came twice a week. The stages got very dirty between visits. I would arrive early and would sweep and mop the stage and surrounding area. I would do this for class sometimes as well. I still sometimes do this.
I like to "commune" with the stage as well. I will lie down on the stage and just... well, meld with it, I guess. It's helped me. I recently shared this little trick with the Dinner for Six crew and it's actually helped.
Respect for the craft. Respect for myself. Respect for the stage. Respect for the class.
Thanks, sensei.
You will be missed.
END OF LINE
"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think." - Socrates
"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." - William Arthur Ward
Hey, a whole new website! I have no idea how any of this works.
Last night's Conan O'Brian show is running on the ole VCR and Rachel Dratch is on. She looks great. It's a weird sensation to see people that used to be here in Chicago on TV and stuff now. Rachel, Raj (Horatio), Tina, Brian, Kevin, Jerry, Stephnie... all friends and now not only on their respective TV shows, but I sometimes catch their names in publications and trades. Chip O'Neil, who was on my very first team ("Throatculture"), is that guy gazing adoringly at his car in the pouring rain on that, well, car commercial.
Improv-wise things at a weird point. I'm not really moving forward; as opposed to the last 5 years. For the past 5 years, it's been a struggle both performance-wise and directorial. The very first show I directed here in Chicago was The Superhero Society of America, an improvised comic-book. It stank. Oh, yeah. It was later vastly revamped and it was a great deal of fun (hmm. wonder if that's going to come back.) Dinner for Six is currently running and it's going very well, thank you. Nice houses, good shows, nice critical attention. The fact that the cast still wants to rehearse weekly is a good indication of right-headed commitment and dedication. They're pretty much running themselves nowadays.
I'm on the Pat Shay Dancers and things are going great. It's almost a completely new team nowadays; at least it feels refreshed and new to me. Pat and I are the only two original members of the PSD. (I think) We were an experimental team first with members from three different teams doing double duty. We were on one schedule, taken off the next, and then put back on with a few alterations. The Jazz Freddy form is great and we found that purely by accident and it suits us to a tee. We still rehearse once a week taking turns "being dick" to each other (coaching). Just about every one on the team is a coach or has directed improv and I've really enjoyed all the different internal eyes and opinions. We sometimes have outside coaches come in and slap us around and that's good too. I thought the shows we did with Jazz Freddy alum Kevin Dorff and Jazz Freddy light-guy Peter Gwinn were very educational.
Boy, I'm hungry.
It's been a quiet time for a while for me.. things have settled and now I'm really looking forward to getting back into a more hectic pace of performing and creation. What does this page look like to you? Can you see the little face yelling in the background? I wonder. I mean, I can't see it at work, but it looks kinda cool here.
PantsHappy 2: Electric Pantaloons!
It was the best of scenes and the worst of scenes. PantsHappy was a show that I did with Pat Shay and John Mulhern. It was an hour-long three person scene. I think we did about 5 or 6 shows. One show, was pretty much the best scene I have ever done. Another show was, oof, not as good. Anyway, Pat, John and I have been fiddling with a new form and we had a rehearsal this morning and it was very good and rewarding. We'll see if we can duplicate it in front of an audience. We're going up for a few weeks in March. See us, won't you?
I've been toying with a long-form show in my head and I think I'll put it up somewhere later this year. It's similar to Dinner for Six in philosophy, but on a much larger scale.
It's going to be a busy year for improv in general, here in Chicago. There's another Chicago Improv Fest, of course, and this year also marks the 20th anniversary of the ImprovOlympic. I'm helping out with the festivities... oooo, it's gonna be a shindig. Crazy shit going down, man.
Steven King, On Writing (A Memoir of the Craft) is an excellent book. Part auto-biography, part instructional it's fascinating.
"... put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around."
In the introduction, King explains why he decided to write the book after years of procrastinating:
"... I asked Amy (Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club) if there was any one question she was never asked during the Q-andA that follows almost every writer's talk- that question you never get to answer when you're standing in front of a group of author-struck fans and pretending you don't put your pants on one leg at a time like everyone else. Amy paused, thinking it over very carefully, and then said: 'No one ever asks about the language.' "
One of the reasons I love improv is the instant creation of words and sentences that have to mean something and prompt a response; be it to make someone laugh, to feed a game, or just to provide some more information. It's the language of comedy, specifically improvised comedy that's so fascinating. In a short-form game, the shortcuts and paths to comedy are relatively laid out and patterned. After a while you can learn what to say in order to create a response from the audience. In long-form, it's the delicate verbal dance between two performers in a scene that eventually creates a response from the audience. The well-crafted phrase or word-play that occurs between talented and experienced performers is a constant delight. Rachel Dratch once said in an interview that an audience watching improv is like an audience watching a magic act; they're amazed by the trickery. Listen to Noah Gregoropolous or TJ Jagadowski or Angela Forfia or Rich Sohn and listen for the intricacies they sometimes weave with their words. They always amaze me with their complex improvisations.
Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy and girl die.
A nobleman and his wife assasinate their king and are wracked by guilt.
Fairly simple plots, but they're the bones of two of the world's greatest pieces of literature. What makes them different from a modern day movie or television show? The Language. Shakespeare had three, sometimes four meanings to his words. Most of his plays can be summarized quite easily; it's the language that makes them beautiful and timeless. I'm not saying we should all begin improvising monologues in our shows, but perhaps more attention should be paid to what we say. Are we saying this to get a laugh? Are we saying this to be funny? Why are we saying this? I don't know. I just like the language. I like smart people saying smart, funny things.
I'm sorry you had to sit through that. The doctors say they're upping my meds. On a different subject, that Jerri and Kimmi have GOT TO GO!!
END OF LINE
"I have spent a good many years since- too many, I think- being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lous about it, that's all. I'm not editorializing, just trying to give you the facts as I see them." - Stephen King, from On Writing.
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