Friday, May 18th and Saturday, May 19th 2012

Musician, Chuck Malone

accompanies the Bit Players

The Bit Players began the weekend of musical accompaniment by master musician and keyboardist, Chuck Malone, with a bit called “Remote Control”.  In this bit, the players become the channels of Frank Fusaro’s television.  At any time, when bored, Frank can change the channel, but on Frank’s TV, the channels (Kevin Killavey, John Mulligan, Neal Leaheey, Stephanie Conrad, and Vlad Tenenbaum continue to tell the same story of Nantucket, voted best island by the National Geographic Channel.

Sue, an audience member,  hailing from Shrewsbury, MA, celebrating her 60^th birthday along with her gaggle of girls from Syracuse, NY, was regaled by the Bits in “Hoe Down” style.

Vlad Tenenbaum in "Olympics"

Vlad captivated the audience with a new bit called “Olympics”.  In Vlad’s version of the Olympics, he took the suggestion of washing dishes and made it an Olympic event. Vlad also requested a pose from an audience member which he incorporated into his mime piece.  To make it even more mind-blowing Vlad introduced four distinct personalities in the piece to the delight of the audience.  Watch the video here: - >
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rken7qrIIuU

John Mulligan, Kevin Killavey,
and Stephanie Conrad in "Ding" 

In “Ding”  our players provide a scene where our host, Frank can stop the scene at any time by buzzing them. The players must then provide new dialog/actions until Frank is satisfied with the new offer and “dings” them to continue the scene.  In the scene, we see our players, John and Kevin in a lighthouse where John is attempting to teach Kevin the ropes of being a lighthouse worker. Kevin, failing a urine test, can not quite grasp the concept of John’s directions of how to pee in the wind.  John instructions finally take hold in Kevin’s drug doped mind as John teaches Kevin the difference between windward and “peeward”.  As they look out into the waters, Kevin and John spy a small boy (played by Stephanie) floating helplessly off the coast on a graham cracker.  Kevin begins throwing small marshmallows and chocolate at the boy, guiding the boy to shore under the hot, bright light of the lighthouse beam.  The boy screams in frustration that the two lighthouse workers are not helping him, and Kevin asks the boy to throw back the chocolate and marshmallows because he and John have the munchies.

The Bit Players "Serenade"
26 year old Jenna

Twenty-six year old, Birthday Girl, Jenna is called up to the stage for a “Serenade”…  The Bit Players learn that Jenna works at the Uniform Shop on base and studied Humanities at UMASS, Dartmouth, and to the dismay of some of the players as well as some of the male members of the audience, is dating a sailor (Brian). Jenna’s life is celebrated in true Bit Players style.

Bit Players sing a "Blues Song"

Ending the Friday night cooky-ness, two additional Bit Players, Jim Foley and Matt Lindman, spending their Friday night in the audience of the Firehouse Theatre, were called to the stage to perform “Blues Song” with the ensemble cast.

Frank Fusaro, Anna Smith, and
Dylan Eberle in "Good Cop/Bad Cop"

On Saturday, performing to another packed house, the Bit Players’ wacky antics were a fitting way to continue the celebration of Preakness Day… Aptly enough, the horse “I’ll Have Another” made it a double, winning the 1^st and 2^nd legs of the Triple Crown…  and Firehouse Theatre’s BYOB crowd may have had another, (and another) during the course of the entertaining evening.  Also fitting, and about the size of the world’s best jockies, Anna Smith rounded out the Bit Players cast for Saturday night’s show.  In “Good Cop/Bad Cop”  Anna had to confess to detectives, Frank and Dylan Eberle, to her crime of killing Zoro, with nail polish, in a Wal-Mart.

In “Irish Drinking Song” Dylan, Frank, Jim, and Tim Bric had fun with audience members Justin (Lawyer) and Sonya Cinnamon (Marketing).  A good sport, Sonya endured an entire evening of the reference to her name as being similar to that of a Porn Star.

Dylan Eberle, Anna Smith and Vlad Tenenbaum
in "Visual Interpreter"

In the second set, Vlad was the “Visual Interpreter” as Anna interviewed Dylan (aka Jean Claud Van Der Castle) as the expert in Quantum Physics.  Mr. Van Der Castle described the inner workings of the Hadron Collider at CERN.  To everyone’s amazement, this seemingly high tech device is powered by small babies running on a treadmill, urged on by India Jones whipping them and throwing steaks at the babies.  But the babies eat the steaks and grow too big, resulting in the atoms colliding and life beginning again.  The outer reaches of space was also described by Mr. Van Der Castle as  being similar to eggs in a space god’s womb, where after birth the tiny galaxies could catch cold and have a fever.  Our interviewer, Anna, wanted to know about Mr. Van Der Castle’s other interests of his clothing line, “The String Theory Collection” because as Mr. Van Der Castle put it, scientists can still be sexy wearing their lab coats made of cheetah skins.

The Bit Players "Serenade"
Bachellorette, Lisa

Bachelorette,  (and Physical Therapist) Lisa celebrating her upcoming marriage on June 16^th  to Ben (The Computer Guy) with her all-girl entourage, was “Serenaded”  in true Bit Players fashion.  Watch the video (with another Sonya reference) here ->:
 http://youtu.be/f-C5vHEMPvM

Rounding out the night with “Blues Song” as an ode to the gentleman in the audience who questionably provided the suggestion that he was blue about “still being married”, the audience was not only delighted by the marriage quips and jibes sung by the players, they joined in the chorus of “ I’ve got the low down dirty, still married Blues…”

The Bit Players perform improv comedy every Friday and Saturday night at 8:00pm at the Firehouse Theatre, 4 Equality Park Place (off Broadway), Newport, RI 02840.  Please call the box office for reservations   

     401-849-FIRE (3473) 

And as always, it is BYOB!