Kim Clark (born April 6, 1959) was a creative professional active in film, television, and live performance. He is a businessman and community leader in Three Oaks, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois where he had lived for the past 15 years with his partner David Fink. Their Michigan-based creative efforts having been featured in The New York Times . Clark is also an ethicist who specializes in poverty and documentary filmmaking, an expert pipe organ builder, and full-time teacher at DePaul University. Kim passed away April 19, 2018.
Clark received a Bachelor of Science degree in applied psychology from Loyola University Chicago and a diploma in Christian education from the Moody Bible Institute,
Clark began his professional career in banking and marketing. Over the course of several years, Clark served as Assistant Vice President at Chicago Cosmopolitan Bank, Executive Vice President of the consulting firm Telestudies, Associate Creative Director at Young & Rubicam and as a partner in Lakeside Management, Inc.
Clark has held simultaneous offices in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. His longtime writing partner Steve Zacharias wrote the definitive comedy Revenge of the Nerds. Together, he and Clark have written and produced new works while fostering young writers in screenwriting careers.
For several years, Clark crafted, and later headed, the writing program for The Second City Training Center. Students and educating colleagues include well-known SNL/EMMY writer Joe Kelly , Conan O'Brien staff writer Brian Stack, Daily Show writer Allison Sliverman , Kevin Dorff, Seth Meyers, Horatio Sanz, Amy Poehler and many others.
While teaching and developing the program, Clark's collaborative and writing partner was Second City improv guru Martin de Maat. [1] Their work in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago redefined teaching, comedic ethical value, tone and manner for a generation of students. Among de Maat's most notable quotes were "no one will follow you down the road if you are holding a banner that reads 'onward toward mediocrity'" and "You are pure potential."
Clark was a featured speaker at the Chicago Tribune 's Printer's Row Book Fair (2001) along with Sheldon Patinkin and Saturday Night Live cast member Tim Kazurinsky. The trio were described by the Chicago Sun Times columnist Bill Zwecker as "Second City Improv Comedy Legends." [2]
From 2001-2003, Clark served as Artistic Director and Educational Director at the Chicago Center for Performing Arts. While there, he contributed to the Players Workshop masters classes, teaching Writing, Directing, On-Camera Technique and other classes.
An avid traveller for much of his life, Clark held a longtime interest in the Galapagos Islands, culminating in a residency on San Cristobal Island beginning in the summer of 2005. Invited by the Galapagos Marine Ecology team at the University of Arizona, Clark, along with a group of 12 secondary and post-secondary teachers, worked with residents of several island communities to teach English to local school children. Clark and Karen Ford-Manza Tompson, former Executive Director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Kansas and current Executive Director at Arizona Family Planning Council, co-authored a work regarding tectonic plate movement which was later reviewed by Rice University Staff (Linked below) The paper was entitled "The Geology and Vulcanology of the Galapagos Islands".
For several years, Clark taught screenwriting and ethics part-time at DePaul University's School of Cinema and Digital Media before accepting a full-time position with the university's College of Communications. [3] There, he teaches Documentary Production, Ethics in Cinema and Gaming, and Media Ethics. [4] As a faculty member, he created and sponsored an extra-curricular creative writing workshop for students called Acting Out. The workshop's goal was to create and polish scripts that could then be optioned for free by the school's production-focused students. [5]
In 2010, Clark partnered with Patricia Werhane, formerly the Ruffin Professor of Business Ethics at Darden, to plan a new venture. She now holds a joint appointment at Darden and at DePaul University, where she is Wicklander Chair in Business Ethics and Director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics. [6] Her latest book is Alleviating Poverty Through Profitable Partnerships with Routledge. This team is creating global poverty awareness and preparing to send a team to produce and direct documentary film projects to raise public awareness of micro-lending in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh segment of the project begins with IIRD (Institute of Integrated Rural Development), an NGO with a stated mission to create a model of rural development that can be replicated in any area of the Bangladesh - one that will facilitate the creation of the strong society.
The project's success thus far has led to an expansion of the project into other topics and locations, such as wage theft, the effects on families for incarcerating parents for non-violent crimes, and examinations of other international models of poverty solution in Tanzania and Haiti.
Clark is also a frequent speaker at international ethics conferences. Recent presentations include: "Video and Pedagogy" for the International Society of Business, Economics and Ethics, in Warsaw, Poland, [7] "The Many Facets of Trust" with Patricia Werhane, Laura Hartman, and David Bevan for the European Business Ethics Network in Trento, Italy, and "Documenting Solutions to World Poverty" at the 10th EABIS Colloquium (hosted by the Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg University).
Clark is the president of Harbor Arts, a Michigan Not-for-profit which has been responsible for dozens of public performances every year, and has featured new artists as well as some of the most popular performers in the world. Baritone Nathan Gunn, arguably the most in demand male singer in the world (Newsweek) sang under the Harbor Arts organization in 2008. In Spring 2009 they featured New York Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Isola Jones, who has often been paired with Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo.
Clark serves on the Board of Writers in the Heartland [8] — a residency program in Central Illinois founded to nurture emerging and established writers. Their mission is to provide a tranquil environment conductive to artistic production and intellectual exchange. Using retreats, sabbaticals and paid stays, candidates may be selected to complete work of merit at little or no cost to themselves. Writers in the Heartland is currently funding scholarships to develop the work of talented writers on an annual basis.
Clark is also a member of the Advisory Board for Southwest Michigan College, which is active in the development of a new degree program in contemporary Theater and Performing Arts Technology. As planned, the school has announced that the degree will begin in 2011.
In 2010, Clark was awarded the Wicklander Fellowship, which is given to full-time DePaul faculty for the application of professional ethics as the topics relate a particular field of research.
Clark has written two plays, Binding Arbitration and Girl Talk, both of which have been produced. In 2000, Clark premiered the original stage play "Girl Talk" at the Other Side Stage Festival on a co-bill with young monologist David Sedaris. The premiere fell in the same week Sedaris' book "Naked" hit the New York Times best seller list for the first time.
He has created numerous comedic shorts with the Second City team, co-writing and directing with many contributors including director Gail Mancuso whose recent webisodes featuring "30 Rock" star Jane Krakowski feature a modern take on two of Hollywood's most iconic romance films — Gone with the Wind and King Kong. Gail's direction includes on-camera comment as a part of the comedic fun. [9] [10]
In 2005 Clark directed Tops or Bottoms, a play by Todd Logan featuring Judy Blue and Richard Shavzin. This new work went on the explore the interchanges of marriage and love over years if tune.
Conceptually the play examined certain experiences "we all go through ... Logan does what good artists do best: he doesn't tell us about these experiences or why they're important, he dramatizes them.
— Windy City Times
Logan has filled his script with a wealth of great lines ... Clark. . . allows us to hear them well.
— Skyline/Lerner News
I loved the show .... Tops or Bottoms is alive with humanity. Todd Logan's piece brought us in the character's world with powerful and endearing humor. His words speak in such a familiar way that all generations can identify.
— ChicagoCritic.com
Clark/Logan have an abundance of wry wit . . . interesting and thought provoking
— Chicago Reader
In 2004–05 Clark directed a successful, significant and extremely ambitions presentation of Washington Irving's classic American Folk Tale, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow , the story of a restless ghost, a scheming schoolmaster, an apprehensive heiress and a teenage girl who thinks demons are delightful.
This musical comedy was written by Judy Freed, music by Elizabeth Doyle and lyrics by Owen Kalt. [11] This production included two full casts performing the same show at the same time (one visually on stage with puppetry, and one as a Greek chorus orally interpreting the script, with full orchestra.) The production used a novel combination of puppetry traditions- Clark used bunraku, a Japanese form of puppetry, elements of Balinese shadow puppetry, traditional stick puppets, and live actors to tell Washington Irving's classic tale of the scheming schoolmaster and the restless ghost.
Once you get a chest full
of our air, so sweet and restful,
You'll hardly even mind the walking dead!— Lyrics sung by the Residents of the Village of Sleepy Hollow
Clark was producer of the Emmy Award-nominated television series Oh, Grow Up (1999), and executive producer of the film All Good Things (2002).
In 2003 Clark produced and developed The Grouch (based on Menander's The Dys kolos) with the creators of Urinetown , winner 2002 Tony Award for Best Original Score and Best Director, and nominee for Best Musical. Later renamed Wild Goat, composer Mark Hollmann and Chicago playwright Jack Helbig (both alumni of Musical Theatre Writers' Workshop at the Theatre Building Chicago) collaborated on the new musical set on the outskirts of ancient Athens, Greece. In Wild Goat, sparks fly when romance inflames two of the most dysfunctional families this side of the Oedipus clan. Composer Mark Hollman had previously won the 2002 Tony Award, the 2001 Obie Award and received two Drama Desk nominations for his music and lyrics to Urinetown and has helped to create some of Chicago's favorite musical theatre, such as Jack the Chipper, I Think I Can and KABOOOOOM!
For more than ten years, Clark and his partner David Fink have executive produced the Chicago Improv Festival only revealing their financial support in 2007 at the annual CIF Masters Award Ceremony. The Chicago Improv Festival was co-founded by Frances Callier and Jonathan Pitts in 1998 as an educational forum. Over the years it has given voice to performers around the world, including writer/performers Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch (performing Dratch and Fey), Seth Meyers, Frances Callier and scores of other new creative comedy voices. The festival continues and grows annually.
I simply love the Acorn Theater . . . the spirit there, the setting, the graciousness yet unpretentiousness, harkens back to the time when music (particularly Folk Music) was shared so intimately that by the time an evening of song ended you not only had hope for the future, but you felt that all the people who were there to experience the music with you were folks you could trust, and who you could call friends. The kind of magic provided much of the spirit that evolved during the decades of the 60's and 70's. How fortunate we are to have a performance space, the Acorn Theater, which brings us together as if we were family and can quite naturally find a place of commonality. A place that fairly vibrates with the sincerity, exquisite taste and generosity of its creators. My newest favorite place to play.
In 2000, Clark and his partner David Fink purchased the old Featherbone factory in Three Oaks, Michigan, which once produced corset stays, and renovated it to house the Acorn Theatre. The name Featherbone stems from the Warren Featherbone Company—a turn of the century American family owned corporation that has far reaching effect on American culture, nature and arts.
The theater is a 300-set multi-disciplinary performing space that features approximately 50 show per year, as well as regular weekly featured events. The theater contains a full Barton theater organ, bar, wine shop, and guest rooms for performers. [12]
Since that time, Clark has acted as artistic director, and has worked to revitalize downtown Three Oaks. In addition to the talent on stage, the Acorn Theater has been a proving ground for writers, dancers and directors including the prolific and well-known American stage director David Cromer . Mr. Cromer is now one of the country's top Broadway theater directors and was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
These efforts have helped Three Oaks to be designated part of Gov. Jennifer Granholm's Cool Cities Initiative in Michigan. What began as a summer arts project, evolved into a Theater District with local Art House Cinema the Vicker's Theatre, a converted turn of the century livery building that now boasts a balcony, hardwood flooring and hand crafted practical arts to rival any venue in the hemisphere. First run programming brings foreign and independent cinema to the small-town of Three Oaks Michigan. Clark and Vickers teamed up to create the Sounds of Silents Film Festival, a silent film series intended to reinvigorate the history and relevance of early 16-fps frame rate films. These screenings featured original contemporary scores and were performed both in- and out-doors. Early in the series, a screening of The Battleship Potemkin was very favorably reviewed by Roger Ebert, who wrote, "It was the music, I think, along with the unusual setting, that was able to break through my long familiarity with Battleship Potemkin and make me understand, better than ever before, why this movie was long considered dangerous." [13]
Over the past few years, the Acorn has presented many musicians, acts and troupes, including: Nathan Gunn (Preeminent Baritone/ Barahunk - latest CD "Just Before Sunrise"), Jefferson Airplane (beginning their "Woodstock Reunion Tour"), Peter Yarrow, Dan Tyminski (Grammy winner, of Alison Krauss, Union Station, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?), Judith Owen (Comedic Songstress - latest CD - Mopping Up Karma), Cowboy Junkies (Alternative – Double Platinum Albums include The Trinity Session – Natural Born Killers), Todd Snider ("Todd Snider's compressed story-songs are so vivid and knowing that they seem completely plausible" - Rolling Stone), Anne Harris , Steve Evans [ permanent dead link ], Bela Fleck , The BoDeans, Autumn Defense, Richie Havens, Poi Dog Pondering, The Guitars of Spain, Pacifica Quartet, Tom Wopat, Howard Levy, Tom Dreesen, and many others.
The New York Times authored a full-page profile of Clark and his longtime partner David Fink in a story entitled "A Getaway That Happens to Include a Theater" (Published: December 21, 2007). [14] When asked about creating a small, influential theater project that has now set world class innovation standards, Clark said "It's like the first time you fall in love. You flip, through fear that you're doing it wrong, and confidence that no one else has had this feeling before in real life." Once in a lifetime lightning does strike twice in the same place, as they were profiled again in a second article entitled "Our Town Stage for the Creative Set" also written by the New York Times. (Article referenced below.) "We're living our dream life," he said. "It is just impossible anywhere else."
The Chicago Tribune featured Clark and Fink in a story entitled "From the ground up at The Acorn Theater, big-city acts thrive in small-town Michigan" on November 2, 2008. . The pair have been featured in Rick Kogan's popular weekly column in the Chicago TribuneSidewalks, which has since been collected in two hardcover books. Clark and Fink are also frequent guests on Kogan's Sunday morning WGN-AM radio show, The Sunday Papers.
The Acorn Theater itself was also profiled on HGTV show Building Character', [15] as well as two of the network's other programs, Rezoned and Offbeat America.
On April 5, 2006, Clark announced his candidacy for Michigan's 6th congressional district, running as the Democratic challenger to Republican Congressman Fred Upton of St. Joseph, Michigan. Clark focused his campaign on improving education and jobs in southwest Michigan, as well as calling for a responsible withdrawal of troops from Iraq. In the general election, Clark lost to Upton, earning 39 percent of the vote.
In 2012, Clark and his partner David Fink were invited to speak and participate at the five-day Renaissance Weekend held at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado.
Renaissance Weekends are structured to encourage the transcendence of political, economic, and religious differences by bringing together distinguished participants from a wide range of fields, including CEOs, entrepreneurs, Nobel laureates, and prime ministers. Past participants include Hillary Clinton, Al Franken, Stephen Colbert, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Weekends are geared towards the establishment of an environment free of partisanship and commercialism, where "civility prevails." Membership is by invitation only.
Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, action, story, and characters are created collaboratively by the players as the improvisation unfolds in present time, without use of an already prepared, written script.
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of improvisation can apply to many different faculties, across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines; see Applied improvisation.
Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997, and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for Best Director and Costume Designer. Her film Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for Taymor's composition "Burn It Blue". She also directed the jukebox musical Across the Universe.
The Groundlings is an American improvisational and sketch comedy troupe and school based in Los Angeles. The troupe was formed by Gary Austin in 1974 and uses an improv format influenced by Viola Spolin, whose improvisational theater techniques were taught by Del Close and other members of the Second City, located in Chicago and later St. Louis. They used these techniques to produce sketches and improvised scenes. Its name is taken from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act III, Scene II: "...to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise." In 1975 the troupe purchased and moved into its current location on Melrose Avenue.
The Upright Citizens Brigade is an improvisational and sketch comedy group that emerged from Chicago's ImprovOlympic in 1990. The original incarnation of the group consisted of Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh, Adam McKay, Rick Roman, Horatio Sanz and Drew Franklin. Other early members included Neil Flynn, Armando Diaz, Ali Farahnakian and Rich Fulcher.
The Second City is an improvisational comedy enterprise and is the oldest ongoing improvisational theater troupe to be continually based in Chicago, with training programs and live theatres in Toronto and Los Angeles. The Second City Theatre opened on December 16, 1959, and has since become one of the most influential and prolific comedy theatres in the English-speaking world. In February 2021, ZMC, a private equity investment firm based in Manhattan, purchased the Second City.
Del Close was an American actor, writer, and teacher who coached many of the best-known comedians and comic actors of the late twentieth century. In addition to an acting career in television and film, he was one of the influences on modern improvisational theater. Close is co-founder of the iO, or iO Chicago,.
Viola Spolin was an American theatre academic, educator and acting coach. She is considered an important innovator in 20th century American theater for creating directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life. These acting exercises she later called Theater Games and formed the first body of work that enabled other directors and actors to create improvisational theater. Her book Improvisation for the Theater, which published these techniques, includes her philosophy and her teaching and coaching methods, and is considered the "bible of improvisational theater". Spolin's contributions were seminal to the improvisational theater movement in the U.S. She is considered to be the mother of Improvisational theater. Her work has influenced American theater, television and film by providing new tools and techniques that are now used by actors, directors and writers.
Matthew Paul Walsh is an American comedian and actor, best known for his role as Mike McLintock in Veep for which he received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. He is a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade sketch comedy troupe, with which he co-starred in the original television series and the 2015 reboot. He also previously starred in short-lived comedy programs such as Dog Bites Man and Players, and was a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He has also appeared in films such as Road Trip (2000), Bad Santa (2003), School for Scoundrels (2006), Role Models (2008), The Hangover (2009) and The Do-Over (2016).
iO, or iO Chicago, is an improv theater and training center in central Chicago, with a former branch in Los Angeles, called iO West and in Raleigh, North Carolina called iO South. The theater taught and hosted performances of improvisational comedy. It was founded in 1981 by Del Close and Charna Halpern. The theater has many notable alumni, including Amy Poehler and Stephen Colbert.
Leslie Carrara, sometimes credited as Leslie Carrara-Rudolph or the misspelling Leslie Carrera-Rudolph, is an American actress, performer, puppeteer, speaker, singer and artist.
Martin de Maat 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.
Kay Cannon is an American screenwriter, producer, director, and actress. She is best known for writing and producing the Pitch Perfect film series (2012–2017). She made her directorial debut with the comedy film Blockers (2018). Cannon was also a writer and producer for the NBC comedy series 30 Rock (2007–2012) and the FOX comedy series New Girl (2012–2014). She created, wrote and produced the short-lived Netflix comedy-drama series Girlboss (2017).
The New Variety is an American cabaret created and produced by Thomas Goodman and Richard O'Donnell. It was a fast-paced, ever-changing volley of acts that included jugglers, fire-eaters, stand-up comics, singers, musicians, and sketch comedy troupes. It was hailed by June Sawyer of the Chicago Tribune as a cabaret for the '90s.
The Purple Crayon of Yale, or the Purple Crayon, is an improvisational theater group at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. The group specializes in longform improv, such as the Harold. The Purple Crayon is Yale's second-oldest improv group, after the Ex!t Players, and the oldest collegiate longform group in the country.
Face Off Unlimited is an improvisational comedy production company based in New York City. In 2003, Jay Painter and Eric Robinson founded Friday Night Face Off, a weekly improvised comedy show in Port Jefferson, New York featuring two teams of comedic improvisers engaged in a mock competition, a concept originated by TheatreSports. Friday Night Face Off has since become the longest continuously running improv comedy shows in Long Island history. In 2009, Painter and Robinson formed Face Off Unlimited, A Limited Liability Company, and brought on former FNFO creative director Joe Tex as Partner and Chief Operating Director.
Joel G. Fink is an American actor, director, acting coach and theatre administrator. He is Professor Emeritus of Theatre, The Theatre Conservatory of the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he also served as Associate Dean and Founding Director of the conservatory. Fink also served as the Casting Director/Artistic Associate of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival from 1988 until 2003. Fink holds a doctorate and an MFA from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He holds a BFA from the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Katie Goodman is a comedian, author, and speaker. She is a creator, writer, and director of Broad Comedy, an all-women's comedy and musical satire troupe that performs sporadically at The SoHo Playhouse in NYC, and tours America raising money for organizations like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. She has performed on Showtime’s The Green Room with Paúl Provenza, Current TV, and TruTV, and has toured internationally for over 12 years. Her comedy has amassed over 3 million views online. As a keynote speaker and trainer, Katie has taught over 10,000 people the art of bringing the tools of improvisational comedy into their work and everyday life. She writes for O, The Oprah Magazine and is the author of Improvisation For The Spirit: Living A More Creative, Spontaneous and Courageous Life Using The Tools of Improv Comedy. Katie was nominated for the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant for her unique work in theatre. She performs her solo show I Didn't F*ck It Up in New York City and around the world.
Dad's Garage Theatre Company, located at 569 Ezzard St. in the Old Fourth Ward in Atlanta, Georgia, was founded in 1995 by Chris Blair, Marc Cram, Sean Daniels, George Faughnan, John Gregorio, David Keeton, Joseph Limbaugh, Matt Stanton, and Matt Young. A second wave of people in the founding summer soon followed, and the theatre company spent the next five years establishing itself in the Atlanta improv and theatre communities. The small theater company has since achieved international recognition for original stage productions and Improvisational comedy. The Second City executive producer Jon Carr is a former artistic director. Lara Smith, managing director, announced that she will be stepping down in late 2021.
Shira Piven is an American director, writer and filmmaker. She directed the 2014 film Welcome to Me starring Kristen Wiig.
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