Monday, December 17, 2018


Happy Holidays

From your friends at

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

Our seventh season this past year was a blast with productions in New York City, plus trips to Fringe Festivals in Asheville, NC and Portland, ME, plus the InFringe Festival in New Orleans.

We produced four stellar shows for New York audiences: What's New, Groovy Gang!, a comedy mystery; The Diabolical Dr. Fiend, a show that asks the question "what if your co-worker is an evil genius?"; IRTE Noir, our salute to gumshoes; and our second season of our favorite little girl robot killing machine, Wow Wee 2: Adventures of a Little Girl Killbot.

IRTE is so excited about 2019 because it means brand new "killer" shows!

For the upcoming season, the IRTE elves have opened their workshop, and are hard at work making plans for our new improvisations. They're hoping to bring entertainment and laughter to all, and give everyone some relief from the past year.

The performing arts need your help more than ever. Small independent theatre is crucial to the cultural landscape of our communities. By providing theaters the financial freedom to take creative risks, we allow artists and ideas to grow and thrive. Ticket sales only cover about 50% of our expenses which include rental of theatre and rehearsal spaces, stipends for tech crew, and festival fees.

We can't do this without contributions from people like you who want to share terrific, zany, live comedy and who want to make sure it's affordable for everybody. Please, consider making a tax deductible donation to the Improvisational Repertory Theatre Ensemble during this season of giving.

Here’s how to make a tax deductible gift to IRTE in 2018 through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas. To give a gift to IRTE during this charitable time of year, please go to the Fractured Atlas IRTE page and make a tax deductible donation on-line. If you prefer, you can also donate by check. Please send contributions to IRTE c/o Robert Baumgardner, 10 W 66 St, #19-H, New York, NY 10023. Checks should be made payable to "Fractured Atlas", with "IRTE" in the memo line. IRTE is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of IRTE must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” and are tax‐deductible to the extent permitted by law. We greatly appreciate it.

Good cheer, blessings, and love to you, your family, and all your friends, from all of us at IRTE!

Nannette Deasy, Artistic Director
Robert Baumgardner
Izzy Church
Jamie Maloney
www.irteinfo.com
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Thursday, June 14, 2018

Dear Diary by Skylar Truman


Come meet Skylar Truman 
and all the survivors of the Robot Wars at

Wow Wee 2! Adventures of a Little Girl Killbot

SATURDAY, June 16, 2018 @ 7:00pm
SUNDAY, June 17, 2018 @ 8:45pm
25A Forest Ave, Portland, ME 04104

The Producers Club
FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS June 22, 23, 29 & 30, 
8:00pm, Tickets $15
358 West 44th Street
New York, NY 10036


Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment

Friday, May 25, 2018

Meet Layla Lowe Wilcox - Heiress, Modern Woman, Femme Fatale


Layla Lowe Wilcox is wealthy, fearlessly independent, and wildly misunderstood. A columnist for the LA Herald, she writes under a pen name, so no one is the wiser. Layla Lowe earns ger living, but most people believe she's never lifted a dainty, well-manicured finger in her life.  The truth is, between what her father and her ex-husband left Layla in their will, she's got enough cush (money) to fall back on for ten life times.

As a child, Layla Lowe got a taste of the gangtails (horseraces). She and her pals would put on their glad rags (fancy clothes) every Saturday and go to the gangtails (horseraces) and then to the casino on Sunday. You can still find Layla there every weekend. Around the tracks, she's known as “Lady Luck,” cause she never could bet on a losing horse.

Even when Layla was married to Herbert Wilcox, she enjoyed a certain independence. Herbert was a shyster (lawyer) worked long hours, never cared too much about her comings and goings. They got along swell. Until one night, not so long ago, Layla found him in his study with a shiv in his back. Police still haven’t figured out who killed him. They figure it was some droppers (hired killers) with a grudge, repaying her husband for a three spot (three years in jail) their boss was doing in the slammer.

Layla Lowe Wilcox at the "Gangtails"
with local jockey.
Two weeks later, the croaker (doctor) declared Layla's father dead after a couple of troubled boys (gangsters) robbed the rattler (train) he was on and put the screws on (questioned him) him about where he hiding his scratch (money) and ice (diamonds).  Cornelius Lowe was a proud, self-made man, a little too proud, if you ask just about anyone. He wouldn’t talk and it landed him in the back of the meat wagon (ambulance). Now Layla Lowe Wilcox is alone, and on the hunt for her next husband. She says she won’t be too quick to jump into anything though; she enjoys her freedom too much.










Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR
Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 
May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2


The Producer’s Club
358 W 44th St, New York, NY
Tickets: $15

Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Meet Jane Doe, Intrepid, Unrelenting Girl Reporter

Newshawk Jane Doe 
Jane Doe is an intrepid, unrelenting REPORTER - a fact seeker, GUNNING for stories at all times. Everyone's business is HER business. She has been on the staff of the local newspaper The Town Tattler ever since a "major publishing house" failed to take notice of her debut literary fiction because, as they said, she was a GIRL.

It was a sweeping tale of intrigue, an opus of delight. A tad bitter over that rejection but emboldened enough to not care, Jane sought refuge in the FACTS, WORDS, the language of the TRUTH. Sure, by writing her novel she bared her weary soul, committing acts of literary grace with lyrical and haunting metaphors. But what did the editors of publishing houses really know of talent?
"A DAME wrote this?!" marvels local newsie Rusty Nail
She'll show them. Maybe with a PULITZER!

She lives alone with a Murphy Bed and two raggedy stuffed toys, from her childhood Muffin and Teddy. It was a solitary time growing up, the only child of a mother who was often institutionalized for various ills and, a father who went out for cigarettes one night and never came back. 

Bitter "Career Gal"
Miss Doe has never married but was engaged once for a very brief time. The groom to be was the son of the local newspaper editor-in-chief. Realizing she had dreams of success she threw the fiance over for a job offer from his father to be the paper's first female cub reporter. 

Ever since then she has flourished and is now... 
A REPORTER!



Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR
Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 
May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2


The Producer’s Club
358 W 44th St, New York, NY
Tickets: $15

Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment



Monday, May 14, 2018

Meet Norah Diamond, Washed-Up Never-Was



Norah Diamond and "Associates" at Tym's Place
Norah Diamond was born Eunice Elvira Bloch  on March 27, 1899 in Newark, NJ. Her parents were Martha and Harry Bloch. Harry was an army private stationed at Fort Dix. When she was six, the Bloch family moved to Fort Lee, NJ. 

One day, as a very young child, Norah wandered on to the set of "Rescued from Eagles" starring DW Griffith. Looking predatory and starved, she was naturally cast as an extra, "chick #5." Pretty soon, due to very loose child labor laws, Norah dropped out of school and was under contract with Champion Film Company, making as many as nine films a day. In 1918, with many important bit roles under her belt (Urchin #3 in "The Perils of Pauline," the consumptive friend of the "Littlest Key Stone Cop," Pretty Pauper #2 in "Robin Hood"), she made her move to Hollywood. First though, the future Mrs. Diamond had a husband to get rid of. When she was 16, Norah Diamond met and married Marvin Diamante, a film cutter with the Edison Company. Horrified, Norah's parents had that marriage quietly annulled. The union produced one child, Tiffany Diamante, who was later "donated" to the Edison Company in a basket left outside the casting office.

"Rescued From Eagles" (1905)

Martha Bloch vowed to chaperone her daughter to her new Hollywood life. By this time, Martha was a widow, Harry having died of tetanus during WWI. (He stepped on a nail while getting off the boat in Calais.) Unfortunately, Mrs. Bloch never made it to Hollywood. Having never had a formal education, herself, she got on a boat that she thought was headed to California - she did not have a strong grasp of geography - and was never heard from again.

Miss Diamond, however, took the train cross country. While on the train, she met, married and divorced fellow would-be actor Walter Alehouse. He would be the second of her 7 1/2 husbands. The 1/2 was due to having accidentally married actress Norma Shearer in the Divorcee (1930) when she was a lighting stand-in for Robert Montgomery during a wedding scene that used an actual priest. The scene was eventually cut from the film.

While in Hollywood, Norah Diamond continued her torrid pace of constantly being cast in largely unsuccessful, overlooked or just cheap rip offs of more successful Hollywood films, including "The Pullman Broad" (1919), "The Shifty Beard" (1920), and "You Should Change your Husband's Pants" (1925). By the middle of the 1920s, Norah Diamond was the most averagely paid "lead actress" in films no one ever cared to see. In the 1930s when the sound revolution hit, no one wondered if she'd adapt.

Norah and "wife" Norma Shearer
Slowly, as the bit roles died out, Norah was left earning money as a stunt double (despite a clear lack of any formal training whatsoever) for Sonja Henie (she couldn't skate) and Norma Shearer (her former husband) - Very few people to this day remember that early Norma Shearer films featured lengthy and vicious fight sequences. (Irving Thalberg demanded it). However, many of these sequences were to be later left on the cutting room floor..

During the fall of 1942, in a fit of desperation, Norah Diamond got very drunk at a party she crashed at the Chateau Marmont and ended up married the next morning to Louis Costello, the half brother of mobster Frank Costello - not, as she had mistakenly thought, half of the comedy duo Abbot and Costello. The poor sap, however, was deeply in love with her and bought Norah her first car (the 1941 Cadillac Convertible she currently still drives) and a house in the Hills. Sadly, Louis committed suicide by shooting himself in the back nine times outside the Flamingo Resort in Las Vegas. With the money he left her (and the ties to certain associates), Norah Diamond bought in to Tym's Place, becoming a "not so silent" partner. 



Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR
Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 
May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2


The Producer’s Club
358 W 44th St, New York, NY
Tickets: $15

Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment

Friday, May 11, 2018

Notorious Goon Fitted for "Chicago Overcoat"


By Izzy Church


Late last night, there was a disturbance down at the docks and the notorious gangster, Gil Weeze was found dead. Now everyone is a suspect. Who could it be? Read all about it!







Perhaps, it’s the former  washed up black and white movie star, Norah Diamond?  Did she go off the deep end for good? Did she think Gil Weez was a thug in an old black and white movie and murder him?  











Maybe, it’s the nosey reporter down at the Herald, Jane Doe?  Was she so hard up for a story that she set one in motion? 

















Maybe it’s Layla Lowe Wilcox, the rich and glamorous widow of the shyster, Herbert Wilcox, known for putting away disreputable thugs and drifters. Could she be seeking revenge for the death of her husband?





Perhaps, it’s the newspaper boy, Rusty Nail? He looks sweet and innocent, but perhaps there is a much darker side to this paperboy that we’ve yet to discover?



Best Dick on the Case:
Detective Philip Cannon
The story will unfold differently every night, with a different murder, so be prepared for foolhardiness as Detective Philip Cannon presses his suspects for information about the mysterious death(s) in this not so sleepy town.  








It won’t be all Murder She Wrote; there will be a musical guest. Tym Moss will be playing down at Tym’s Place, so be sure to book your tickets in advance. 



You don’t want to miss IRTE Noir!  Directed by Curtis Dixon.










Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR
Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 
May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2


The Producer’s Club
358 W 44th St, New York, NY
Tickets: $15

Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

From The Diary of Dr. Fiend

Saturday:

All week the pigeons had been eating the special grain I prepared.  Poor, unsuspecting citizens!  As planned the effects of the grain began in the early afternoon.  I watched with delight as special reports began streaming throughout the media.  The first was a couple who were enjoying a lovely picnic in the park - yuck! - when the first incident happened.  Suddenly it was as if lava had fallen from the sky and set their blanket ablaze.  What was this?  Stupid citizens!  Before long there was one story after another of the mysterious "lava rain" that was devastating the city.  The fires were lovely!  I left my window open so I could listen to the beautiful music of sirens and the screams of a city in chaos.  Even after my little flying merchants of death finished their "rain" of terror the fires burned.  It made for a wonderful evening and I was quite pleased with myself.

Sunday:

Well, the stupid authorities finally figured out that it was the pigeons.  Surely they would know that some evil genius had planned the whole thing, right?  WRONG!  The cretins and their inept "experts" decided that the birds had somehow consumed large amounts of ghost peppers.  GHOST PEPPERS!? The level of brain activity these fools display is shockingly low.  I doubt they even bothered to test the residue left behind.  Because if they did they would know the genius it took to formulate the grain and have it make its way through the digestive track of the birds to release its full effect at precisely the right moment.  I almost went public but have decided to work on another plan for next weekend.  This time they will know that it was someone with a brilliant mind and a thirst for destruction.  Then I will hear those words I've been waiting to hear from their lips:  "Who would do such a thing?!"

Monday:

I was almost late to work because of a bus driver who decided to be kind and help several handicapped people get on and off the bus.  Why do we keep the handicapped around?  They're simply in the way all of the time and the rest of us have to work around them.  It would much more helpful if they would just use them for human experimentation.  If it's good enough for prisoners it's good enough for the handicapped I say.  Work was a complete disappointment as well.  I had planned to stay in the server room and work on my next act of evil but as IT Director it's never that easy.  The idiots that I work with managed to completely crash the server and I had to spend the entire day fixing it.  But it did give me a wonderful idea for next weekend's event.  An electrical current that I can remotely send to the dogs and cats of the city that will make them enraged and turn on their owners.  Should be simple enough.  Hopefully the authorities will figure it out this time.  But I'm not holding my breath.  Now it's time for a nice dinner and a warm bath.  Tomorrow the wheels begin to turn and I'll be one step closer to another glorious weekend of chaos!

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Ripped from the Floorboards…

Sci-Fi-Q Gets Lost in IRTE’s The Experiment
By Jeremy Binderhull


His body was found stiff and cold, burn marks around his face and neck. But this didn’t look like any electrocution Chet had ever seen, and he’d witnessed a lot of them during his six years onboard the USS Juno, first transwarp space vessel in the fleet. A hazard of the job, engineering on one of the most complex machines in the known galaxy. Electrocutions were as common as airlock drills. This was something different, something Chet couldn’t wrap his wrench around. One thing was certain, Captain Rosin was dead and something strange and terrifying was going on.

~ ~ ~

This scene is just one example of what you might witness when you attend one of IRTE’s performances of their sci-fi comedy thriller, The Experiment, at this year’s Asheville Fringe Arts Festival.

Performing for two nights during the 4-day festival, the Improvisational Repertory Theatre Ensemble mixes comedy improv and science fiction in their unique brand of improvisational theater. The troupe works without a script, crafting their character relationships and stories onstage before your very eyes.

Last year IRTE won the award for “Artists Whose Work Made Me Laugh The Most” for their improvisational birthday party extravaganza, Happy Birthday, Stupid Kid! Their production for the 2018 festival (the 16th annual Asheville Fringe Arts Festival!) is a decidedly different show. Thanks to their director writing up his impressions from some of the ensemble’s rehearsals (yes, they do rehearse for their unscripted shows), we have a few more glimpses into the possible worlds awaiting audience members who dare to submit themselves to "The Experiment"... Enjoy!

~ ~ ~

Is he gone yet? I don’t hear any footsteps. He must be gone.
"He"? Why do you keep saying “he”? You saw that thing same as I did. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t know if I can call it a “he” or anything else I’ve ever known.


Did you just hear a chicken?

~ ~ ~

She gazed deep into my eyes. I could smell her breath. She’d had some of Charlie’s four-alarm chili. That was when I knew she was still human, still one of us.

~ ~ ~
Strange going-on in the mountains of western North Carolina...

Kids gone missing up in the foothills outside of Waynesville, Asheville, and Fletcher. Reports of bizarre sounds and eerie lights. These are the things that keep residents ever watchful and neighbors banding together to solve a problem local authorities seem unable to. With the winter chill firmly taken hold in these small, mountain communities, folks aren’t taking any chances. People are taking things into their own hands, and it’s about to get messy.

~ ~ ~

Find out what happens, and be a part of the action at IRTE’s The Experiment, presented by the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival

Featuring Actors: Nannette Deasy, Robert Baumgardner, Jamie Maloney, Connie Perry, and Sam Katz

Directed by Bill Berg

With Musical Guest Mike Andersen and Friends

Thursday, January 25 at 7 p.m.
Saturday, January 27 at 7 p.m.
Sly Grog Lounge, 271 Haywood St, Asheville, NC

Tickets: $13