Oak Park actor stars in football drama

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Joseph McCauley (from left), Tim Martin and Philip Winston in "Mortion." | Photography by Johnny Knight.

Updated: January 24, 2012 5:06PM

Tim Martin admitted it’s “a little intimidating” that everybody else in the cast of Signal Ensemble Theatre’s production of “Motion” knows more about football than he does. That’s because the actor, who spent his teens and early 20s in Oak Park, plays Casey Donovan, a star senior quarterback at Louisiana State University in this sports drama by Signal’s co-artistic director Ronan Marra.

“I played football in middle school and I did really enjoy it,” Martin said. “But I was small and slow and I wasn’t terribly good at it. In middle school, I was 5-foot-one and a little tubby.”

Martin’s come a long way since those days. He’s now 6’ 3” tall and slender. The actor admitted that he was concerned he was too skinny to portray a football player but Glenn Stanton, a cast member who played college football, convinced Martin that Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo looked like him when he was just out of college.

“Motion” centers around a sports agent named Drew (Joseph McCauley) who is determined to make Casey the number one pick in the professional football draft. Trouble arises when Drew’s ex-wife Diane (Meredith Alvarez) is hired as general manager to rebuild the franchise that owns the pick. A labor dispute further complicates the situation.

Troubles

Slipping into his quarterback character, Martin said, “I have a really great record so everybody’s assuming that I’m going to be picked number one in the professional draft. A month or two before the draft happens, I get in some law trouble. Now, I don’t know if I’m going to be picked number one because my reputation is tainted.”

Martin began doing theater while attending Fenwick High School in Oak Park. “My older brother and my older sister had both done it and I had always gone to see their plays,” he explained. Prior to that, his only acting experience was an ill-fated performance in a Christmas pageant when he was three and living in London where he was born.

“I was playing Father Christmas and I was supposed to say, ‘Ho, Ho, Ho, Happy Christmas,’” Martin said. “I didn’t say anything. I just stood and stared at the audience. My little friend Lizzie, who was dressed as a lamb, put her arm around me and said my line for me.”

Martin originally planned to study film production in college, with the intention of doing directing and editing. But that changed during his senior year at Fenwick when he played the Robert Redford role in a high school stage adaptation of the movie, “The Sting.” Following one rehearsal, his teacher said to him, “Have you ever thought about doing this as a career because I think you’ve got it,’” Martin recalled.

Theater studies

Those were magic words to Martin. “That day I filled out an application to Illinois Wesleyan University and asked to audition there,” he said. “They offered me a scholarship to do the BFA acting training.” In addition, Martin took classes in set design.

A few months after graduating, Martin appeared in “Six Degrees of Separation” with Signal Ensemble Theatre. “I really enjoyed the company,” he said. “I thought that the ensemble members had a great aesthetic and a great mission statement.”

He has performed with a number of other Chicago theaters, including Bailiwick, Chicago Fusion, Adventure Stage Chicago, A New Leaf and Caffeine. In 2010, to home his skills, Martin attended the School at Steppenwolf. He also signed with an agent, and has been auditioning for TV and film roles.

Martin was inspired to audition for “Motion” because he was impressed by Signal’s production of the jukebox musical, “Aftermath,” which was also penned by Ronan Marra.

“The cool thing about the play,” Martin said, “is that you don’t need to be in love with football to like the play. It’s very accessible to any type of audience.”