Liz Labacz
Actress
Real Dame
Six years ago, almost to the day, I wandered into the Cathedral of Learning with my best friend from high school, looking for the improv show we’d seen advertised on the free flyer in our freshman packet. Of course, we’d both forgotten the free coupon. And we were an hour early, having not read the flyer properly. But if you want a manifesto on what a ditz I am, you can just read my blog.
After getting lost in the creepy basement for a while, wandering back up to the ground floor, getting asked out by one of the vampire LARP-ers that used to hang around the Cathedral on Friday nights (back in my day…), and sneaking around the Nationality Rooms, we finally passed through the double doors of Friday Nite Improvs.
I have never looked back.
I played World’s Worst that night, smug and proud of myself for getting onstage at my first show. And I failed. Totally bombed. But after I slunk back to my seat in embarrassed Freshman self-consciousness, I found that while I may no longer be smug, I was still proud of myself for getting onstage. Because, seriously, Failure is Ok. Today, I host World’s Worst, because every good failure story needs a happy ending.
FNI essentially defines my college (and post-college) life. I did many things during 4 years at Pitt but Friday Nite Improvs is the thread that weaves my college life together and keeps me connected to my
This year, FNI is eighteen. It is as old, if not older, than the incoming class of freshman, FNI’s life blood. FNI was already happening when these new attendees (who can now smoke, play the lotto, and buy pornography) were breastfeeding. But we don’t like to talk about that too much, because it makes Uncle Louis cry. And hopefully stop making so many Allman Brothers references (I don’t get them either).
A few years ago, after the first and only year Pitt would not allow FNI to include the Free Admission flyers in the Freshman packets, I was recruited to help convince the Freshman Committee to let us back in. I started to make a list of why it was important to include these flyers, besides the obvious, “It’s fun!” When I started the list, it was a bullshit way to legitimize something that was really just a good time (You know, like fraternities are “really for doing volunteer work.”), but as I went on, I realized that my bullshit wasn’t bullshit at all. FNI is good for the community (yeah yeah, so are fraternities).
It is a non-alcoholic alternative for the underage, and while we never frown on the ever-present drunks who show up at our door for a late night comedy booty call, FNI is just as fun stone sober. Friday Nite Improvs donates money to charities all over the city. You might hear Ben joke about coke and hookers, but that $3 we hand over every week fights AIDS, feeds the homeless, rescues stray animals, and shelters the families of cancer patients. I know, FNI is practically a superhero, right? It is an outlet for expression, a bastion of improvisational comedy in a city that finds it hard to support that particular art, and a breeding ground for creative partnerships. And you can call me cheesy, but FNI creates community. FNI discards the rules of the high school cafeteria; we encourage jocks to sit with nerds, goth kids to make out with nerds, theatre geeks to marry…nerds. We really like nerds. And The Breakfast Club. Really though, that kind of environment comes from the Equal Opportunity idea that pervades what FNI is about. Anyone can get onstage, and in the same vein, anyone and any type can be mocked mercilessly. And because everyone is a target, no one really is. So we can all be friends and hold hands around the campfire. Kumbaya, indeed.
FNI has changed over time, evolved, and adapted. It is a scrappy little underdog show, and I expect it will thrive long after these incoming Freshmen have sent their own children here. Some have called us a cult. I say, FNI doesn’t ask for enough money to be cult. But other than that, sure. Drink the Kool-Aid.