Martin de Maat
Overview
 
Martin de Maat was a teacher and artistic director at The Second City
The Second City
The Second City is a improvisational comedy enterprise which originated in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood.The Second City Theatre opened on December 16, 1959 and has since expanded its presence to several other cities, including Toronto and Los Angeles...

 in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. He also taught at Columbia College
Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago is one of the largest art colleges in the United States with nearly 12,000 students pursuing degrees within 120 undergraduate and graduate programs...

 and Players Workshop. He studied under Viola Spolin
Viola Spolin
Viola Spolin was an important innovator of the American theater in the 20th century. She created directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life...

. De Maat and Del Close
Del Close
Del Close was an actor, improviser, writer, and teacher. Considered one of the premier influences on modern improvisational theater, Close had a prolific career, appearing in a number of films and television shows...

 were the two main figures of the Chicago improvisational comedy scene in the late 80's and throughout the 1990s.

De Maat began working at The Second City as a teenager washing dishes in the kitchen and began teaching classes at The Second City for his aunt, Josephine Forsberg
Josephine Forsberg
Josephine Forsberg , ex-wife of film director Rolf Forsberg was hired by Paul Sills and Viola Spolin to join the original Second City in 1959 as the female understudy and Spolin's teaching assistant...

, when he was 18 years old.
Quotations

You are pure potential.

Sign quoting de Maat near the entrance of The Second City Training Center

The Hokey Pokey|Hokey Pokey. Think about it. At the end of the song, what do we learn? What is it all about?... You put your whole self in!

As quoted in "Community Mourns the Death of Martin de Maat" by Lisa Lewis (2 March 2001)

The base of the work is one of individuals believing in themselves, trusting themselves in the moment and being accepting of themselves and the people around them. In order to improvise in front of an audience, you have to be accepting, involved in the moment and courageous. Those issues, when transferred over to general communication, makes the communication richer and helps in all areas of life.

You know what intimacy is? It's into-me-you-see... it's allowing someone to know who you are when you have all these defenses to keep them from knowing.

Each of us is unique, and if we don't respect that uniqueness, if we don't allow that which we are to surface, then the world doesn't have it

No one will ever follow you down the street if you're carrying a banner that says, "Onward toward mediocrity."

 
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