The fourth of July festivities have fizzled, but don’t let that prevent you from treating yourself to another Four Day Weekend. That’s as long as you’re talkin’ about the Fort Worth improvisational comedy troupe of that name. If you blow off another Friday and Monday at the office, you could be looking at a 24-hour/7-day weekend, permanently.

But at least you could count on the Four Day gang to cheer you up from an unemployment induced funk/ These guys could cheer up almost anybody. After all, these are the same folks credited with introducing the words "improvisational comedy" into the vocabularies of most Fort Worthians.

When the group first set up shop in Casa Manana’s Theater on the Square almost two years ago, most audiences didn’t know improv from imported beer – though they often drank enough of the latter to make their ignorance of the former somewhat irrelevant.

Now you’d be hard-pressed to find someone unfamiliar with the troupe’s blend of scripted sketches with skits and musical numbers driven by the suggestions of audience members.

Standing-room-only gigs and the prevalence of rowdy, drunken late-night showgoers prompted the Weekenders to start looking for a new space with a more accommodating start time. After flirting with the idea of relocating to a more exotic clime – say Chicago, New York or Los Angeles – the troupe settled instead on the upstairs theater space at Caravan of Dreams with an accessible 9 p.m. show time.

Lucky for us. With the new digs come a new lineup and a new show. In addition to founding members David Wilk, Troy Grant, Frank Ford, and David Ahearn, the group welcomes musical director Paul Slavens.

Familiar to Four Day regulars from his guest performances with the troupe over the past several months, Slavens first grabbed the attention of music fans as a member of Denton-based pop-funksters Ten Hands.

"We have a musical director who’s also an improviser and a great performer in his own right," said Wilk. "He has the same sort of group mind as we do, so when we’re onstage performing, he’s right there on the same page. It’s Magic."

Wilk says that folks familiar with the improv games patterned after Chicago’s Second City theater should get ready for something completely different. And with the group booked at the Caravan for a year, it’s a space they can call home – but they’d rather call it the Four Day Weekend Theater.

"In Fort Worth, we were always a guest at someone else’s theater," he says. " Now, the lights, the staging, every aspect of the theater is ours and can be designed for our needs. So visually, the sky the limit."