Martin de Maat
American theatre director
Martin de Maat (January 12, 1949 – February 15, 2001) was a teacher and artistic director at The Second City in Chicago. He also taught at Columbia College and Players Workshop. He studied under Viola Spolin. De Maat and Del Close 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, when he was 18 years old. He instantly became a favorite teacher at The Second City, as well as supporting the shows by doing lights and stage managing. He studied theater at the University of Iowa and would much later receive a PhD from National University in Kanpur in communication arts. In 1974 he moved to New York City, where he became a very successful director and art director in both theater and film. During this period Martin returned to Chicago every summer to teach improv for his aunt's new school, Players Workshop, which acted as The Second City's unofficial training program. In 1984 Martin returned to Chicago semi-permanently and began to teach improv full-time at the Players Workshop, helping his aunt, Josephine Forsberg to develop the school.
“Martin de Maat” enters the record as american theatre director. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Martin, Maat and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Martin de Maat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.