When Jemilla is living among the Neanderthals, three of them who appear are played by Jaime Lyn Beatty, Brian Holden, and Tiffany Williams.
The puppet characters are played by Joey Richter and Lauren Walker, as the two of them aren't often among the tribe. Joey is the front half and voice of Trunkell, Snarl in Act One, and the duck. Lauren is the back half of Trunkell and Snarl in Act Two (which includes his voice).
The multiple choreography jokes centered around Keeri: she is the inventor of dance; during a musical number, Jemilla asks if Keeri choreographed the dance they're doing behind her back; and she offers a few notes on the choreography of "Climate Change". Denise Donovan, who plays Keeri, is one of the choreographers.
Grunt's self-description as fated to forever be the Butt-Monkey of any group he's in could easily apply to any of Joey Richter's past Loser Protagonist roles as Ron Weasley, Joey Richter or Bug, except this time since it's a female-led production he's Out of Focus.
The Cast Showoff: The show begins with Meredith Stepien showing off her skill with the bongo drums.
Corpsing: The reason the whole tribe is averting their gaze in awe from Chorn in the ending is no one can look at the costume or hear Jamie Burns' hilariously overwrought performance without breaking into laughter.
Creator In-Joke: There's a Running Gag on social media (and on the Firebringer DVD extras) about how fellow Chicago-area comedian Dan Strauss was originally cast as Jemilla but never showed up to a single rehearsal, forcing them to cast Meredith Stepien to replace him at the last minute.
The Danza: Clark Baxtresser as Clark, though they toy with it by crediting him As Himself.
Playing Against Type: Lauren Lopez playing a grown woman, while she usually plays little boys.
Throw It In!: One memorable performance had a Blooper where Rachael Soglin's beaded belt was a little too tight and when she raised her arms too fast during a solo it exploded all over the stage. This created an impromptu Running Gag of characters trying to surreptitiously get rid of the beads, including Joey Richter as Trunkell trying to sweep them off the stage with her trunk, until finally Lauren Walker as Molag comes onstage with an anachronistic push broom to finish the job.
What Could Have Been: Many of the characters have different, less-comedic names in the original cast announcements (seen by Kickstarter backers) than they do in the show itself. Zazzalil, Jemilla, Emberly, Keeri, Grunt, and Tiblyn were announced with those names, but Molag was called Kahlo, Schwoopsie was Sahra, Smelly-Balls was Choka, Chorn was Sheena, and Ducker was called Dur.
When the Langs proposed doing a new show with Meredith Stepien taking the lead, they proposed two ideas, a "caveman show" and an idea they'd apparently had for a long time for a show about fairies. Meredith picked the former, which means fandom has been speculating about the nature of the latter idea as a Riddle for the Ages. (Nick Lang eventually pushed back on this fan speculation by saying that the reason Meredith picked the caveman show is that it had a plot — the conflict over the invention of fire — and the fairy show did not and still doesn't.)
June Saito's original costume design for Chorn's true form was as a very conventionally beautiful and feminine Space Elf. It was Nick Lang's idea that she should instead be an androgynous and vaguely off-putting Expy of Gozer the Gozerian.
Nick Lang had the idea, inspired by Twin Peaks, to provide a bonus for fans watching the recorded version of the show and record Chorn's entrance in her alien form by filming Jamie Burns performing the scene walking and talking backwards and then playing it in reverse, to make her movements and speech that much more surreal. Sadly, this turned out to be too much trouble to implement, especially since this scene had to be rewritten mid-show to be much longer (see Viewers Are Geniuses on the main page).
Smelly-Balls is mostly a nod to the All Cavemen Were NeanderthalsBeast Man archetype, and was initially written to be totally mute Dumb Muscle, but Brian Holden began playing him as an Expy of Vin Diesel, and started throwing in lines where everything Smelly-Balls says is an incongruously saccharine line about "family" (based on Vin Diesel's infamous line as Dom Toretti in Furious 7, "I don't have friends, I got family"). Sadly, most of this was cut from the final show, except for Smelly-Balls' line "Chorn means family" in the climax (which doubles as a reference to Lilo & Stitch).
Word of Saint Paul: Lauren Lopez's headcanon is Zazzalil is eventually responsible for inventing all manner of other ancient tools of destruction, such as the catapult.
Written by Cast Member: This play is the brainchild of Meredith Stepien, who is credited as both a writer and songwriter and plays Jemilla.
