Asbury students are encouraged to begin to wind down their semester tonight and tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. with the biannual student-run production of Friday Night Live.
Many students have been writing, working and rehearsing for “Friday Night Live,” Asbury’s version of the award-winning Saturday Night Live.
“FNL is based off of SNL Saturday Night Live,” senior director Morgan LeBeau said. “It’s sketch comedy and this year we have five. We have an improv section, we even have ‘Weekend Update,’ which is based off of SNL Weekend Update.”
The production process began the second week of this year’s fall semester.
“We usually do a whole month of improv teaching them the basics, some games to figure out what we’re doing, which could involve doing several different things like how to build a character, how to say ‘yes and,’ stuff like that,” LeBeau said. “Working with people, how to build a plot and then wrap it up in under 10 minutes when you know nothing beforehand. Then we move into the rehearsal process with the sketches. Our writers write, and then they send them to us. We fix the kinks and then we give them to the cast, they memorize them and perform them.”
Seating is limited due to COVID-19, so the shows are Friday and Saturday night instead of only Friday.
“Because of COVID, we had to bring down our seating,” LeBeau said. “We usually have 350 plus seats, and now we only have 50 something. So they let us do two nights which we’re really grateful for. It is in person, which is a really big deal for theater in COVID.”
LeBeau is encouraging students to come and see the show, which will provide rest after a long semester.
“Absolutely buy a ticket. FNL is the biggest student production at Asbury. Usually, it sells out. It’s just really funny,” LeBeau said. “It’s exactly what you need after a full semester of stress and midterms, all of the stuff adds up. Coming here on a Saturday night or a Friday night and laughing at these sketches is like therapy for people and it makes my day. I would love people to come.”
