Are you tired of the same boring movie date?

The improvisation group Commedia del Arte offers a nice alternative.

The troupe will give a free performance this Friday night in the Cellar Theater in the Fine Arts Building.

The Commedia del Arte improvisational troupe started at the University in 1991. The idea of the group came out of a production of “Servant of Two Masters,” an 18th century play by Carlo Goldoni, which the drama department performed, said Stanley Longman, head of the department.

After the University’s first production, the play’s cast was invited to perform at an Italian festival in Atlanta, and the troupe was formed. The cast has changed a great deal since the original lineup, but the idea remains.

Shelly Stover, the leader of the troupe and a junior from North Alttleboro, Mass., said her favorite part about performing Commedia is directly interacting with the audience in the moment.

“If someone gets up to leave a show, there is a chance they will become a part of the scenario,” Stover said. “I love the freeness of improvising parts of the scenes in Commedia while sticking to the strict rules and boundaries of character walks and stereotypes.”

In each play, there is a set of stock characters, and the goal is to bring two lovers together, Longman said. There is a class struggle between the wealthy merchant and lawyer and the servants.

He said one of the lovers is usually a child of one of the wealthy characters, and the parent works to keep the lovers apart because he has different plans for his child. The servents provide comice relief and work to brintg the lovers together, Longman said.

Harlequin is one of the most famous characters in the play, and he carries around a slapstick. This is where the term slapstick comedy came from, Longman said.