Friday Nite Improvs, or FNI, is a long-running weekly improvisational comedy show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The show functions as an improv jam, performed by improv actors who don't normally work together. FNI is unique in that, in addition to improv-inspiring suggestions, the performers are all pulled from volunteers in the audience Improvisational comedy (also called improv or impro) is comedy that is performed with a little to no predetermination of subject matter and structure. ... City nickname: The Steel City Location in the state of Pennsylvania Founded 1758 Mayor Tom Murphy (Dem) Area  - Total  - Water 151. ... State nickname: The Keystone State Official languages None Capital Harrisburg Largest city Philadelphia Governor Ed Rendell (D) Senators Arlen Specter (R) Rick Santorum (R) Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 33rd 119,283 km² 2. ...

The show began in 1989 with a group of several University_of_Pittsburgh theater students gathering in rehearsal spaces to play improvisational theatre games. From there, the show found several homes, most notably the Pitt Theatre and the studio theatre in Pitt's Cathedral of Learning, its current home. The University of Pittsburgh is a state-related, doctoral/research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ... Improvisational Theatre (also known as improv or impro) is a form of theatre in which the actors perform spontaneously, without a script. ... The Cathedral of Learning The Cathedral of Learning is the centerpiece of the University of Pittsburghs main campus in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ...

The show continues into 2005, its 17th year. It stands as the longest-running theatrical/comedic production in the city of Pittsburgh.

The Show

While the content of the show varies from week to week, the show itself has developed a format that it regularly follows.

The Rules

The rules are fairly simple, but they change from time to time

• Failure is OK
• Welcome the Performers / Thank Them for Performing
• No Booing
• Listen &mdash Respect The Performers / Respect Your Scene Partner
• Keep the Theatre Clean ("Ben is Not Your Mother")
• Wang Chung - "Everybody Have Fun Tonight."

Other rules that have fallen by the wayside, but which are sometimes revived by necessity, include: "No Stereotypes" and "Too Soon (after a tragedy of some sort)," both of which are more like guidelines for decent comedy than steadfast rules, which is most likely why they are oft-forgotten. Wang Chung was a British New Wave musical group. ...

The Games

As of August 24, 2005, FNI maintains a catalog of more than 90 improv games. These range from relatively simple scenes in which attributes are intermittantly tweaked to guessing games to elaborate, longer forms.

While the majority of these games are gleaned from such sources as books, the Internet, and other improv groups, the regular performers who work behind the scenes actively invent new games for the show. For a period of time, host Ben Mayer even instituted a rule that the second game of the night always be a new one, and the show generated upwards of 50-60 games during that time; admittedly, not all of them are keepers.

As of 2005, a typical show contains six or seven games, including Freeze.

Freeze

Freeze is the one mainstay game of Friday Nite Improvs, starting every show at approximately midnight, and lasting until around 12:30 a.m. While Freeze exists elsewhere, FNI has its own version of the game, with its own rules.

The host first appoints a nibber, an audience member charged with running the game.

Two volunteers from the audience create a scene with suggestions for a relationship and a situation. When an audience member feels the scene is ending, he or she may call out the word "Freeze!", which causes the onstage action to immediately pause.

The nibber then decides what happens next, speaking one of two phrases:

• "Go on in!", at which the new audience member will tag out one of the performers and re-create their physical position, using that position as a starting point for a completely new scene.

• Nib!, a gentle rejection that indicates to the audience that the scene still has somewhere to go and has not yet reached a positive end point. The audience member is invited to try again when the scene nears that point.

At some point toward 12:30, the nibber will call out, "The next is a three-person," meaning that when the current scene ends, the new audience member will not tag a player out but will instead join the two performers onstage for a new scene.

Finally, the nibber will inform the audience when the current scene will be the last, eventually bringing the game to an end with the phrase Scene!

Showcase

Showcase, following Freeze, is a variety performance slot, intended to add another texture to the night's show. These are more often than not musical performances, but have also included poetry recitations, sketch comedy, magic, juggling, dance, escape artistry, and contests. While showcase is intended to be a momentary interlude between improv games, improv groups have from time to time supplied guest performances as well.

The History of Friday Nite Improvs, a Work in Progress

The Early Years

Jeffrey DeVincent, creator and first host of Friday Nite Improvs, came to the University of Pittsburgh's MFA program for Theatre Arts in 1989. DeVincent had spent some time the previous summers in Chicago, where he saw performances by improv groups like The Second City. And worked closely with Michael Gellman, Artistic Director, Second City in various projects at Northern Illinois University. He had also seen the first North-American broadcasts of the British improv comedy show "Whose Line is it Anyway?". Alternate uses: see MFA (disambiguation) Master of Fine Arts (MFA) is a graduate degree in an area of applied or performing arts typically requiring two to three years of study beyond the Bachelors level. ... The Second City is a long-running improvisational comedy troupe based in the Old Town area of Chicago, Illinois, with offshoot troupes in other cities, most notably Toronto. ... Whose Line Is It Anyway?, sometimes called Whose Line? for short, is an improvised and largely unscripted comedy pseudo-game show. ...

DeVincent and eight fellow actors started an informal improv workshop to provide work for the undergraduate students, with Jeff directing. The group met every Friday night in various rehearsal spaces on campus — frequently Cathedral of Learning room B16/B18 — and called themselves the "Late Nite Club". This group included Chris Potocki, Dereck Walton, Barbie Williams, Shawn Williams, Fletcher Reed, Pattie Miles (1989), Walter Herschman, and Rachel Resinski.

As more actors & their friends started to attend, people were often heard asking, "Are you going to improv on Friday?" or, "Friday night, improvs?" Quickly, the number of attendees at the workshop became too many for small rehearsal spaces.

In addition to the increasing size of the group, the idea began to change. While Jeff's co-host, Pattie Miles sought a more structured workshop with the more experienced improvisational actors as teachers, Jeff wanted to create a show in which anyone could take the stage and perform.

In September 1989, Friday Nite Improvs' first performances began. The workshop that had begun with eight people had grown to draw an audience nearing 250 people (constantly pushing fire codes and rules). Admission was one dollar, with the collected money going solely toward the purchase of food and beer for the weekly post-show parties hosted by Lee Piper at "Piper's Fun City."

The audience at the time was made up mostly of Theatre Department students and local actors, grew to a campus/city wide phenomenon and/or cult-like event. While Jeff encouraged everyone to attend, the knowledge of FNI was largely confined to the Pittsburgh acting community, as well as many friends of the improv during the 1989 academic year. In 1990 the Pittsburgh media started to attend in full force, writing many glowing reviews and preview articles. The audience then grew tremendously. The original eight members experienced and enjoyed a certain celebrity status on PITT's campus (and in the Pittsburgh theatre community) throughout their involvement and college life, as did the regular audience participants.

Each week, DeVincent would begin the show by welcoming the audience ("Welcome, welcome!") and going over the rules he had created to encourage performers: Failure is OK, No Booing, Always Welcome, SUPPORT is ENCOURAGED, and Always Listen. He would then announce that it was time to play Freeze, which Jeff believed was the foundation of all other improv games. Freeze would sometimes take up the first 90 minutes or more. Occasionally the group played other games after, including the improvised cult-soap operas "Corn Town" and "Shalico."

The Hosts

• Jeffrey DeVincent (1989 - 1993)
• Pattie Miles (Co-host, 1989)
• Chris Potocki (1993 - 1994)
• Charles "Chick" Leiby (1994 - June 1996)
• Louis Stein (June 1996 - October 1998)
• Ben Mayer (October 1998-

External links

• The Friday Nite Improvs website