by Zach Farnum
Trevecca students packed Benson Auditorium Friday night for two consecutive showings of “Friday Night Live.”
The annual SGA sponsored event is one of the most anticipated student events of the school year.
“[FNL] has developed a reputation for being extremely entertaining and funny with great production, while gently poking fun of ourselves,” said Matt Spraker, associate dean of students for community life.
The night, hosted by fiancées Amanda Grieme and CJ Bradley, included a plethora of skits and videos put together and performed by students and echoing well-known sketches from NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”
The night was kicked off with a mock press conference announcing the new Trevecca Truckers Institute, a spoof on Trevecca’s fairly new National Praise and Worship Institute. The motto of Trevecca Truckers, “we’re full of it.”
One of the highlights included students setting up a fake wedding for Grieme and Bradley who are to be wed this summer. Jokes were aimed at Trevecca couples, commuters, NPWI, faculty and athletes throughout the show.
One of the most notorious moments of the night involved Bradley portraying Associate Provost and Dean of Student Life, Steve Harris at a Judicial Council meeting. Grieme, who played Ronda Lilienthal, introduced “Harris” and his hobbies, which included keeping his brother in the position as the men’s basketball head coach.
“We have intelligent, clever students writing and performing this show and they know how to do it. Comedy can offend our sensibilities a little without being inappropriate, insensitive, or cruel,” said Spraker.
Trojan Idol 2013 Winner, Michelle Cantrell and Trojan Idol 2014 Winner, Maureen Maltez faced off in a Trevecca Bookstore Sing-off complete with ripping a wedding dress off Hope Kenerly.
References were made to popular trending topics including #TheDress, “American Sniper,” and the “50 Shades of Grey” spoof, “50 Shades of Pray.”
“Since the end of FNL last year we started coming up with ideas for this year,” said Kaylon King, Trevecca junior who was the organizer of both this year and last year’s event.
Some of those ideas were for video clips to be sprinkled in throughout the program. The “That’s So (Linsey) Cravens” video of Linsey Cravens spoofing psychic, Raven Symone of Disney Channel fame, was one of the fan favorites. Following the music video tradition, Michelle Cantrell, Jasper Armstrong, and Lauren Riendeau performed “One More Chapel to Go to,” a play on Ariana Grande’s “One Less Problem.”
There’s always stress,” said King who has dedicated much of her time to “FNL,” adding, “especially when you haven’t slept but a couple hours.”
The audience’s favorites of the night included Teal Davis and Sarah Hogan’s Weekend Update that included poking fun at athlete headshots, a feature with Trevecca Security, and they even fit in a joke about me.
Miranda Stanfield tweeted “Caleb is the star of this,” speaking of Caleb Willis who definitely shined with his voices and impersonations as he switched between acting and singing with the house band.
“Friday Night Live” was made possible because of the work of around 50 Trevecca students, faculty, and staff.
