By Ashley Walling and Alexis Garcia
When the curtain goes up tomorrow on the annual Friday Night Live, more than 45 students will have already put in three months of work.
The event, one of the most popular on campus, takes hours of work and the creativity of several students.
“We have a team of about 45 this year working on FNL. Most of them are writers or creative brainstormers who have helped speed the process of getting scripts and ideas going,” Laura Beth Winchester, SGA social life director and this year’s FNL director. “This event, in particular, takes us a long time because we meet once a week for about a month and a half, and then we start meeting multiple times a week once we begin getting closer to show. Then, the week of the event, we rehearse every night.”
FNL is a spoof of NBC’s Saturday Night Live. The videos and live skits are about Trevecca and students and faculty.
In addition to the brainstorming, writing and rehearsing, Uy Nguyn, a year and major, is working as the show’s videographer.
“He films, edits, and designs everything along with the help of some communication committee members,” said Winchester.
Rehearsals are time consuming and sometimes stressful, but working with a team and creating the content is worth it, said Brittni Carmack, a multimedia journalism major and actor in the show.
“This week has been a long week for all of the cast and crew. We started rehearsing Monday evening and have had rehearsals everyday this week leading up to the show, meetings beforehand, and even some filming of skits on the side,” said Carmack. “My experience acting in FNL has been very positive. It’s been a ton of fun and great way for me to relieve stress and to spend time with a hard working group of people.”
Script writing is another major job.
“This is my second year writing for FNL. I got involved last year and realized that this was a place I felt like my writing could really thrive,” said Amanda Grace Johnson, a junior English major. “I have acted out my skits before. Last year I wrote for a skit we did called “American Bachelorette” and I got to play the bachelorette, America. It was really cool to get to be a part of something I wrote.”
For Winchester, it’s a great way to wrap up her tenure as social life director.
“This show is just as exciting as other large events I’ve done, but this one is super fun because I get to work with a cast and we get to be silly together. It’s definitely more intimidating, because the show is held to somewhat of a higher standard and we have tons of content that needs to be written and filmed, but it’s a blast, and we have a ton of fun in the process,” said Winchester.
FNL is Friday in Benson Auditorium. Tickets, which are free with a slap card, are already sold out for the 9 p.m. show. Tickets to the 6:30 show are still available at the SGA booth.
