Too Long

I once decided that if I ever wrote a book about improv, I would dedicate it to my favorite improv teachers. Del Close and Martin de Maat, two men who often saw themselves on opposite sides of the fence, died less than two years apart, and Chicago improvisation has never been the same since. I think they would have both chuckled to find that they share space in my head. Martin served as artistic director of Second City's Training Center, an amusing choice, since Martin often quipped, "It's so easy to be funny. Why bother?" He's the main reason why, when I graduated college in 1994, I wanted to move up to Chicago. Sure, I had vague ideas about making it big in improvisation, then returning to my main love, science fiction, with all of the leisure time I would have, but at this point it's clear that I might as well have said, "I'll get that transfusion as soon as I've squeezed this blood from this stone. Hope it's A-positive!"

Martin taught me to stop seeing life as a series of stepping stones. He observed that everyone who auditioned for Second City's Touring Company didn't want to understudy TourCo at all. They wanted the movie deal based on their hit SNL character. To do that, they had to get TourCo, move on to ETC, then mainstage, land a gig performing for Lorne Michaels, and finally score a hit with viewers with something inane but irresistible, the "Lothar" of the modern era. Consider this: it's like throwing a dart and hitting five consecutive bulls eyes. With the same dart.

So, I can't say that I didn't expect the day that I would graduate the Training Center with nothing more than an expensive t-shirt. I just wish I had had more time with Martin, or that more teachers took on his, "You are pure potential" viewpoint. Stephen Colbert taught my Level 5 class, and he was very nice, but my class didn't get along and he wasn't the character he plays on TV. He was interesting and hardworking and, in retrospect, I wish I had gotten to know him better, because he says such interesting things about Del.

It took me a long time to get into Del. My first workshop with him proved only how much of a jerk he could be toward college students. I guess having written The Book on what he saw as the future of improvisation led him to feel a little embittered about having to give workshops to people who had never read it, but, man, watching him bum and smoke cigarettes while he visibly hated our game of Freeze Tag made it hard to like that son of a bitch. It wasn't until I reached the end of my IO classes that I realized how much we had in common: the man was a science fiction nerd. That was cool.

More than that, once he saw a scene break out of the usual tropes of improv, becoming something closer to Art, he opened up like a flower. I was lucky enough to perform with some of the most talented and motivated people at the theatre at the time, and together all of us learned new stuff every time we took the stage. If Martin saw us as pure potential, Del saw us as the fathers of Art, mothers of Chaos, children of Science, siblings of Melodramatic Capitalization.

Too many years have gone by since their passing, and there's no rhyme or reason why I would think of them today. Perhaps it's just the season, or the loved ones we've lost recently and the many more ahead of us. It's too bad that just coming up with the quote doesn't get the book written, but that's life. Here's what I would have said:

To Del and Martin, who would have been surprised to find they share this page.
Gurus, legends, friends (but not with each other). May the heavens thunder with your wit.