ABOUT THE SHOW
Fireside Mystery Theatre is a motley assortment of actors, writers, musicians, and technicians united by one common goal: to take your darkest fears and put them in your ears. This twisted take on the old-style radio variety show was birthed by Gustavo Rodriguez and Ali Silva in 2011. The show got its name because it was literally performed in front of a fireplace at The LIC Bar in Long Island City, Queens. The show is currently performed monthly and recorded live at The Slipper Room in New York City. Thanks to the efforts of former producer Daniel Graves, the show officially became a podcast in the autumn of 2014 and was immediately met with great excitement and acclaim. FMT has a penchant for the mysterious and the macabre as well as a healthy dose of humor and spirited musical performances.
FMT's scarifying stock company of actors is helmed by Ali Silva and has featured performances by Allison Guinn, James Rieser, Bill Heidrich, Courtenay Gillean Cholovich, Brian Wallace, Michael Pate, Mary Murphy, Anabelle Rollinson, Alain LaForest, Kacie LaForest, Eirik Davey-Gislason, Daniel Graves, James Kleinmann & Lauren Elder. Silva also hosts the show in addition to her many characterizations. The show’s original material is primarily penned by Silbin Sandovar with delightfully dark contributions from other fine writers. FMT was the subject of a featured piece in The Daily News in 2014 and was voted one of the Top 10 Podcasts in NYC by Untapped Cities alongside "This American Life" and "The Moth."
ABOUT THE CREATORS
As a child, Ali Silva was raised on the dulcet tones, cadence, and comportment of NPR and the various dialects of the voices in her head. With a love of literature and language, lyres and lutes, histrionics and hermitage, posturing and pantomime, Ali was naturally attracted to and drawn in by the theatre.
Classically trained in England by pulchritudinous pucks in an enchanted empyrean, she found herself energized and emboldened as she spent many an evening entranced by broadcast brownies and wireless spirits.
In a not too terribly dramatic way, Ali wondered why there was not more of this kind of intoxication thriving on her native terra firma. Fireside Mystery Theatre is the not too terribly grown-up love child of the meeting of like minds, Gus and Ali, over not too terribly inebriated evenings spent not too terribly long ago. And with the not too terribly simplest of means, FMT’s maturation has bewitched and beguiled the finest of kindred spirits. We continue to grow as a menage of the exceptional and extraordinary.
Ali relishes in portraying old ladies, multi-lingual ape-women, mischievous imps, and all the roles in between. She believes in a conspiracy of cartographers. Magic happens in the shadows.
Gustavo Rodriguez created "Fireside Mystery Theatre" along with Ali Silva in 2011 with nothing more than a match, some newspaper, and a Duraflame log. Oh yes--and a dream. A really dark dream. To produce sounds that keep you up at night.
When not writing and producing the show, he enjoys being let out to ring the cathedral bells, listening to the voices in other people's heads, and believing his own press.
He is widely admired for his powers of mind control and the vampire-like drain he has on the energies of his collaborators. To quote Gustavo Rodriguez, "You should never quote Gustavo Rodriguez. Forget you read any of this."
Silbin Sandovar is an American writer living in international waters. From his houseboat The Subcutaneous he scrawls on the backs of his concubines the various wild tales he imagines for Fireside Mystery Theatre. He was educated in six two year schools and holds six associates degrees in English. In a bold move, he dared to combine the words "scare" and "laff" in order to form The "Scarff" Society. None other than the great Upton Dinkdot has declared him a true Werther's Original.