Angelina Martin: Hello, Darling

When Angeli­na Mar­tin opens her inter­view with Valerie Lopez by describ­ing her appre­ci­a­tion of the beau­ty of her home­town of Ojai, Cal­i­for­nia, as ​“I like being inside, know­ing that it’s pret­ty out­side”, I knew I’d found a kin­dred spir­it. I think nature is fan­tas­tic, as are win­dows, which pro­vide a scenic – yet pro­tec­tive – bar­ri­er through which to view it.

Clad in her almost trade­mark ball cap (“I have such a com­mit­ment to not buy­ing hair dye,” she jokes), Mar­tin opens up quick­ly about life in Ojai on the road to grow­ing up in com­e­dy. An only child until age 11 when her par­ents adopt­ed two chil­dren, she – despite claim­ing love of the indoor life – was an avid ten­nis play­er, and even at a young age was start­ing to test the waters of per­for­mance and creativity.

At age 7, Mar­tin was push­ing out that per­pet­u­al rite of Cal­i­for­nia punk pas­sage, ​“zines”, from her bed­room floor. She also jumped into some high school plays that can only be described as ​“mem­o­rable”, and ​“required atten­dance audi­ence”. Much of the cred­it and sup­port for her bur­geon­ing cre­ative expres­sions she attrib­ut­es to her high school dra­ma & writ­ing teacher, Kim Maxwell. ​“She encour­aged me to be as weird as I want­ed to be,” Mar­tin gush­es about her encouragement.

While attend­ing San Fran­cis­co State, it turned out col­lege life didn’t quite hold the appeal Mar­tin expect­ed, while – unsur­pris­ing­ly – income and free­dom did. That led to a 40 hour work week as a nan­ny, fund­ing improv class­es to build her per­for­mance skills. Inspi­ra­tion for improv came from lead­ing shows like Upright Citizen’s Brigade, and Whose Line is it Any­way. With only so many hours in the day, her class­work suf­fered, and she ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to bid farewell to school, and Cal­i­for­nia, and moved to Austin to con­tin­ue pur­su­ing comedy.

Mar­tin saw in Austin what so many have come to appre­ci­ate, a thriv­ing scene that pro­vides a ​“care­free envi­ron­ment, where peo­ple cre­ate com­e­dy and art for com­e­dy and art’s sake,” in her words. (To be fair, she also got the idea from the movies Whip It and Dazed and Con­fused.) It’s a prov­ing ground, with lev­els of suc­cess in its own right, and we’ve come to wel­come estab­lished and up-and-com­ing stars, eager to hone their voic­es and skills with a plen­ti­ful, friend­ly, audi­ence. It’s a city so nice, she, in fact, moved here twice, with stays in Cal­i­for­nia and Ice­land in between, before mak­ing Austin her long term home.

After most­ly focus­ing on work in her first stay, the sec­ond time around Mar­tin real­ized ​“I need to do this all the time”, and start­ed doing com­e­dy ​“obses­sive­ly”. Encour­aged by comics like Niki­ta Red­kar and Eliz­a­beth Spears, she took on her first open mic at their show Playpen, and it went well enough that she was quick­ly ready to go back for more.

“I feel like I’ve found the clos­est friends through comedy…it’s like a big extend­ed fam­i­ly.” Angeli­na Martin

With sup­port­ive friends, and an eth­ic for con­stant per­form­ing, Mar­tin found a grow­ing con­fi­dence. She tru­ly val­ues the con­nec­tions she’s made, not­ing ​“I feel like I’ve found the clos­est friends through comedy…it’s like a big extend­ed fam­i­ly.” She appears in mul­ti­ple shows reg­u­lar­ly, and hosts the hilar­i­ous and cringe-induc­ing Slide in the DMs, the first Thurs­day of every month at Fall­out The­ater. Slide brings Austin’s female and non-bina­ry per­form­ers on stage to reveal and riff on the worst of human­i­ty that…exposes itself…through direct mes­sages on social media. She also recent­ly took over the pop­u­lar show Buz­zkill, orig­i­nal­ly with co-host Tyler Groce, but cur­rent­ly with Carl­ton Wilcoxson.

I can’t men­tion social media and Mar­tin with­out talk­ing about her Twit­ter feed. Rarely a day goes by where she doesn’t drop a bit of – often self-dep­re­cat­ing – gold that jumps right out amidst the nor­mal tor­rent of mun­dan­i­ty and depress­ing news. (A recent favorite: ​“I love to have fun (for 90 min­utes tops)”; truer words, Martin…truer words.) ​“I hate my social media pres­ence,” she says, but ​“I feel like I real­ly put myself out there.” Take my advice and go fol­low her, pronto.

Offline, Mar­tin is work­ing on oth­er ideas, many of them involv­ing ​“crush­es” in one way or anoth­er; one con­tem­plates talk­ing to her crush­es about their crush­es. She’s been knock­ing items off her ​“goal check­list”, open­ing for per­form­ers at The Velv and Cap City, and was recent­ly cast in a fea­ture length, ful­ly impro­vised, film. ​“Putting myself out there” is indeed her order of the day, whether it’s the stage, or act­ing in stu­dent films or episod­ic web-series.

“I real­ly want to cher­ish and take advan­tage of this real­ly nour­ish­ing cre­ative envi­ron­ment.” Angeli­na Martin

Mar­tin has accom­plished quite a bit in a fair­ly short career to date, and we expect to con­tin­ue to see more and big­ger things in her future. She says she’s bid farewell to the ​“impul­sive girl”, and is direct­ing her urges into build­ing more tal­ent and projects. As for the long term, can we expect her to heed the calls of the East or West Coast com­e­dy scene? Not yet, she says: ​“I real­ly want to cher­ish and take advan­tage of this real­ly nour­ish­ing cre­ative environment.”

We’re hop­ing Mar­tin will be tak­ing advan­tage of us for some time to come.

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In addi­tion to Slide in the DMs and Buz­zkill, you can catch Angeli­na Mar­tin at these upcom­ing shows:

• Apr 26: Bub­ble and Squeak at Brent­wood Cof­fee­house at 8pm
• May 6: Shit’s Gold­en at the Velvee­ta Room at 9:30pm