Friday Nite Improvs

Friday Nite Improvs, or Friday Night Improvs (FNI), is a long-running weekly improvisational comedy show staged on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh 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 the audience's providing improv suggestions, the performers are all pulled from volunteers in the audience.

Friday Nite Improvs is the longest-running theatrical/comedic production in the city of Pittsburgh. The show regularly features actors from every improv group in Pittsburgh, and alumni have gone on to act, write, and produce for television and film.

Readers of the Pittsburgh City Paper ranked Friday Nite Improvs as the 3rd best place to see comedy in Pittsburgh in the 2004 "Best of Pittsburgh" survey behind the professional stand-up clubs The Improv and The Funnybone.[2]

College Prowler ranked Friday Nite Improvs as the ninth best thing about Pitt.

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.

Jeffrey DeVincent attended the University of Pittsburgh's MFA program for Theatre Arts, began in 1990. DeVincent had worked closely with The Second City Artistic Director Michael Gellman at Northern Illinois University in Chicago (he was directed by Gellman in improvisation and in a live production of Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take It With You ). DeVincent and eight fellow actors started an informal improv workshop 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 Kohlhousen, Pattie Miles, Walter Herschman, and Rachel Resinski. [3]

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