Shy Comedian : Irvine’s Tom Martin Fights Against Introversion as He Rises in the Business of Making People Laugh

If Tom Martin makes it big in the funny business, it’s safe to say he will be a reluctant star. Shy and self-effacing--kind of the introverted boy next door--he has been pretty reluctant each step of the way so far.

“I had no intention of ever getting on-stage in my life,” Martin says, remembering the period nearly four years ago when pal Jim Hope (the subject of yesterday’s profile) was persuading him to join the first meeting of the UCI Comedy Club.

“We get there, we write this material and then it came time to audition for that first show, and I still had no intention of doing it. I said, ‘I’ll audition, but I just can’t get in front of people and talk.’ So I did audition and just about everyone got in. I still thought, ‘There’s no way I can do this.’ But I went ahead and did (the show)--I even pulled out notes and read ‘em--but it was a lot of fun. I got a big kick out of it.”

Still, the “big kick” didn’t translate to any life-changing epiphany: Martin didn’t suddenly picture himself as a professional comedian. Indeed, when he graduated from UCI, he still thought he wanted to travel a conventional career route. He took a management-training position for a computer firm in Culver City.

“I lasted two weeks,’ Martin says, who only then started to seriously heed his own growing urge and the ongoing encouragement from friends like Hope.

“Jim was convinced I was going to be a comedian before I was,” he says.

Bailing out of the computer firm, he began substitute teaching. That way, he could perform in the evenings and work the next day--or not work, if the previous night had been a late one. Most of those early post-college appearances were at the Laff Stop in Newport Beach (where Martin will perform Oct. 26 with Gilbert Gottfried). “That’s where I started getting my stage feet,” he recalls. But “to this day,” he adds quickly, “I get really nervous going in front of people.”

While that’s true of a lot of people, even a lot of performers, the affliction may run a little deeper in Martin, whom Laff Stop manager Janis Taylor describes as “your mild-mannered reporter type.” Martin himself acknowledges that “I hate being off for three days, because I slip back into being introverted.”

But, at 25, Martin rarely has to deal with too much time off these days. Following much the same path that Jim Hope navigated, Martin also is now a solid professional funnyman. He just broke in as an opening act for the Improv chain, having worked his first week at the Irvine club in August. That was an important, exciting breakthrough for him.

“Once I started working (professionally), the big goal was to work at the Improv here,” says Martin, who lives in Irvine. “I didn’t feel like a real comic until I worked that week there. I’m really happy about getting in with the Improv. It carries so much weight. If you’re a opening act for the Improv, it’s like you’re a middle everywhere else.” (And indeed, Martin has made the transition at many other clubs, here and on the road, from opening to middle act).

Martin’s enthusiastic feelings for the Improv are mutual. Pam Felix, manager of the Irvine Improv, was enormously impressed at the growth Martin demonstrated in that August engagement. When she first saw Martin, nearly two years ago at one of the club’s open-mike nights, she thought there “was no hope for” him. Now, she says, “He’s made an incredible amount of progress.”

Now that Martin’s play-the-Improv goal is behind him, there are others he wants to achieve. First, this fine, gifted writer (who, like Hope, attributes his edge there to the training he got from adviser Jim Birge in the UCI group) wants to elevate his performing ability to the level of his writing.

“I used to just stand there and say my material, but that’s putting too much pressure on the material. . . . I had to learn to tell the audience where to laugh, basically, which involved intonations and facial expressions and smiling--things very obvious to a natural performer, but not necessarily obvious to a guy who is better at writing.”

As far as performing is concerned, Martin still may be what Birge remembers from the old UCI days: “sort of a sleeper. (When he) started working with us, his material was kind of funny. But his presence was just kind of odd, because he almost seemed like a businessman up there talking to you. But, eventually, you came to realize that not only could this guy write really well, he was one of the hottest (comics) that we ended up having.”