The Second City Training Center

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The Second City Training Center was founded in the mid 1980s to facilitate the growing demand for workshops and instruction from the world famous Second City theatre. The training center works directly with Second City's theatres in Chicago, Toronto, metro-Detroit, and Las Vegas. Additionally there are satellite locations in New York and Los Angeles due to the large theatre community in those cities. The training center is named after the late teacher Martin de Maat.

The center offers a variety of classes for different ages. Common course offerings include comedy writing, improvisation for actors, beginning improvisation, and sitcom and screenwriting. The flagship for the school is its Conservatory program which requires a series of auditions and culminates with a show written and performed for several weeks by the graduating class. The training center also acts as a breeding ground for new talent for the Second City's National Touring Companies.

Former training center students include Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Bonnie Hunt, Stephen Colbert, Halle Berry, Sean Hayes, Oprah Winfrey, and Hinton Battle.