The McDonald’s of Comedy?
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Clark sees his dismissal as one of many changes at the training center in the year since de Maat’s death. He and three staffers from the center’s improv division–the center offers separate programs in writing and improv–had been appointed to fill the vacuum de Maat had left. Anne Libera (Leonard’s wife), Norm Holly, Michael Gellman, and Clark were to have equal authority and rotate as artistic director, with Libera assuming the title for the first year. But, says Clark, it quickly became clear that Leonard would be taking a larger role in training center affairs than he had during de Maat’s tenure, when “the stage and the training center were completely separate.” The beginning of the end came last fall, Clark says, when Leonard “called me in and said, ‘I want to change the writing program.’ I wrote him a long E-mail. I said, ‘No. You do the producing, I do the writing. Let me do my job, please. Please don’t hire any teachers.’”
Clark says his resistance to the bureaucracy being imposed on the center was another issue. He says he spoke up in meetings against proposed rules that would micromanage things like hiring and teaching and institutionalize an already pervasive insularity. “They were starching the passion right out of it. Second City is a bar. We sell drinks for a living. It’s not a college. Get a grip.” After a policy meeting where it was suggested that teachers who criticize Second City should be put on probation, Clark says he realized that it is now one of the most conservative places he’s ever worked. “I’m like, You can’t do that. This is a place of social change and political satire. That’s so Disneyesque.” Clark says he got five calls about jobs the day he was fired and has no regrets. “There’s been a fear for a long time that Second City is the McDonald’s of comedy. I wonder if it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. I don’t want to stay for that.”
