It was Christmas Eve of 1989 when Ali Reza Farahnakian, founder and owner of the People’s Improv Theater, had what he calls an epiphany while watching Saturday Night Live. Ali was about to graduate college, and realized that while he had been planning on becoming a doctor, he didn’t want that – what he really wanted was to play a doctor on TV. Growing up in a small town, Ali had always enjoyed playing pretend, and so the move to a career in improvisational acting felt natural. With this goal in mind, he moved to Chicago to work with the iconic Second City Theater.