Lou Stein
Even though I've been attending FNI for many years, I am not now (nor have I ever been) a theater major. I made my first reservation at this Hotel Terminus when I signed up for an Intro to Performance class while in collage. I figured - and rightly so - that it would be an easy "A". I did have one problem with the class - it had a requirement that each student attend one showing of Friday Nite Improvs. Well, the idea of having to see a play (or whatever the hell FNI was) at 11 p.m. on a Friday night was about as appealing as having Rip Taylor give me a prostrate exam on a very special episode of Mury Povich.
But I did go. What I was expecting to find was a few lonely art freaks looking like they just stepped out of a Pairs jazz club and discussing their inner pain, - but what I saw was something much, much worse. The first time I went to a FNI show, I saw a place were totally ordinary people got up on a stage and did things that were absolutely extraordinary. Average looking people were doing some of the best comedy I had ever seen. These weren’t professional comedians or paid performers, these were people you would pass on the street and not think twice about.
So I went back the next week, and the week after that. I wanted to get up for a game so bad I could taste it, but I was scared out of my wits at the same time. On my third night I happened to run into a friend who, unknown to me, had been going to FNI for some time. I remember him saying "You're a funny guy, you should get up there." Yeah, right. I’m all for making a fool out of myself for a laugh, but there was no way I was going to get up there and be outclassed in front of a hundred people.
The very next game the host asked for two volunteers. I was looking the other way as my "friend" raised his hand. The host looked in our direction and motioned for him to come on up, but he pointed at me and shouted "No, this is the guy who want’s to play!!" My head whiped around faster than JFK meeting the lead ambassador from Italy. "Uh... Thanks but no." Jeff DeVicent (the host) teased me "Oh, come on... This is an easy game. What’s your name??" About thirty seconds later the entire audience is chanting my name trying to get me on stage. Fine. Whatever. If they want the pain, who am I to refuse.
The game I got roped into was called Genre Jump: Two people get a situation and a relationship and begin - the trick is that the host keeps switching the genres. The situation and relationship my on-stage partner and I got was American Gladiators cooking meatloaf. I was so paralyzed with fear at the time, that is about all I can remember about the first time I performed at FNI - with one noted exception: I definitely remember opening my mouth, hearing sounds coming out, followed by the laughter of the audience. And no, they were not laughing at me, they were laughing with me.
When the game was over and my partner and I left the stage, the applause of the audience hit me like a meta-amphetamine Zagnut bar sprinkled with crack cocaine floating around in a can of Jolt cola. Betty Ford in a monster truck couldn’t have pulled me away. I was hooked.
Like I said, that was many years of Friday night’s ago. The long term effects aren’t as bad a most people say; I’ve kinda gotten used to the swelling. God help us all.