First-ever Franklin Street Comedy Festival comes to Chapel Hill

University of North Carolina graduate Ali Farahnakian founded the original PIT -- an acronym for People's Improv Theater -- in New York City in 2002, and after taking over the space once occupied by the DSI Comedy Theater, The PIT Chapel Hill has steadily increased the number of shows, classes and corporate workshops it offers.

Will Purpura, who Farahnakian tapped to manage the Chapel Hill venue, said the festival is the culmination of an effort to help experienced comedians in the area get better, and encourage new comedians to get started.

“I think what we have booked here is almost every comedian that we’ve ever booked, almost every improv team that we’ve ever booked, special versions of shows that we’ve done before, workshops with people who have been supporters of us since the beginning,” said Purpura, a Massapequa, N.Y., native who studied screenwriting at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York City and is a co-producer of the festival along with Josh Rosenstein. “It was just sort of like, how can we get everybody together for a week, just show after show after show.”

While local talent will populate the festival show lineups, the idea for the Franklin Street event started coming to fruition because of Judah Friedlander, an NYC stand-up and actor who played Frank Rossitano in NBC’s “30 Rock” from 2006-13 and released the critically-acclaimed Netflix special “America Is the Greatest Country in the United States” in 2017.

Friedlander brings his Future President Tour to the festival and will be headlining 8 p.m. shows at The PIT Nov. 24-25.

“He happened to be on tour, touring new material as a follow-up to his last Netflix special,” Purpura said. “He was in this area so it was a great stroke of luck.”

Rosenstein, who grew up in Atlanta, went to the University of Georgia and moved to Chapel Hill in 2014, added: “Once (Friedlander) was confirmed for shows here we were like, we can build a festival around this show.”

The Franklin Street festival will feature stand-up, improv and sketch, and a $50 pass will get you into almost every show at The PIT and Local 506.

An emphasis was placed on keeping it local for this year’s fest but Purpura and Rosenstein said they could see the festival becoming an annual event with national reach.

However, they will plan for that when the time comes. For now, they want to make this year’s festival the best it can be for performers and patrons alike.

“I want folks to be excited about seeing people from out of town and maybe someone from their neighborhood who they didn’t even know was a comedian,” Rosenstein said. “They’ll check out the shows we have here, they’ll come check out local open mics in town and if they really like comedy, they’ll try it themselves.”