FSU's Friday Night Live brings the creativity and the laughs

By Sergio Diaz-Silverio

Many student-run organizations on Florida State University's campus foster creativity and collaboration among their members. One in particular does so through the unique art form of sketch comedy.

Friday Night Live, or FNL, gets its name and cues from NBC’s popular show Saturday Night Live. FSU students with various backgrounds meet regularly to both write comedy sketches and to create digital comedy shorts. Those works are pieced together for a live performance each semester.

“Basically, the idea for Friday Night Live was to put up a show that was just like Saturday Night Live, with live sketches, shorts, a musical guest, and a host,” says Dalton Russell, president of the organization, who is an English-Creative Writing major as well as an Applied Mathematics major. “It was just kind of our way of differentiating ourselves from the other sketch comedy groups at FSU at the time.”

In addition to the sketches, digital shorts, and other SNL elements, Friday Night Live has a segment called “Weekday Update,” akin to SNL’s “Weekend Update” segment. “Many of the groups would use the fact that they were doing sketch comedy and then commercialize it as though they were just like SNL,” Russell adds. “Many times, they were just producing YouTube content, though, and they weren't actually doing a whole live show.”

The club was founded in the spring of 2019 and was the brain child of five FSU undergraduate students who wanted to start something special. They created a space to hone their skills as writers and performers, while also putting on a show for other students at FSU to enjoy.

Dalton is the only remaining member from the original founding group, but he says the energy and excitement for the club is more alive than ever. Other members of FNL’s executive board include Aaron Farabaugh, an English-Creative Writing and Theatre double major, Julia Hoffman, a Digital Media Production major, Nick Schwab a double major in Communication and Criminology, and Reagan Olenick, who is earning a master’s degree in Media and Communication Studies. Each member of the board is a cast member and writer, and all of them serve as producers. However, the group boasts more cast members than just the board.

“We had this big fear over summer 2021 that Friday Night Live was going to die because we had lost nine members—everyone except for our current board had either graduated or left, it was just us five,” Olenick says. “We were like, ‘We are inheriting this club, what do we even do.’ To be at the place where we are now with 12 members and putting up content and performing is really something special.”

The club hosts a writers’ sketch workshop every other Wednesday in Bellamy 007, and the workshops serve as a great way to get anyone who is interested in comedy writing involved. The workshops begin with quick tips and lessons on how to better one's sketch writing by giving participants different examples and even personal feedback on sketches they may be working on.

The club then breaks into writers’ groups that tackle different sketch ideas they have in mind for the live show and go through each script. Eventually, there is a selection process, and the sketch is incorporated into the club’s live shows if the sketch gets enough momentum and laughs.

“We create a pseudo-writers’ room where we let people bring up their ideas and share scripts, work on stuff that they have already written, bounce ideas off of each other, and try to teach the basic structure of sketch comedy,” Hoffman says.

The peak of the club’s anticipation is centered on the semester’s live performance. This semester the club performs two shows Friday, April 8, at 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. at the Mainstage, 609-2 McDonnell Dr. in Railroad Square. Food will be served between shows and doors will open 30 minutes before the start time.

The plan is to perform all original sketches that members have been working on and conceptualizing for months. The group also will premiere all-new digital shorts they have been producing over the past semester.

More information about that show will be on their social media, @fnl_fsu. FNL also does smaller live performances at smaller venues, and all information will be posted on social media.

“Besides the big performance, we also do a lot of our material every semester in mini performances for Club Downunder Union Productions or different open mics,” Farabaugh adds.

The board has set up a funding account to financially support the club, and board members urge students or others interested in donating to contact them through email or via direct message on social media.

For students interested in becoming part of a live sketch comedy production, a humorous writers' group, or even just a group of students who are genuinely excited about the purest of laughter, FNL is a great opportunity.

Sergio Diaz-Silverio is an English major, on the editing writing and media track.

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