Twelfth Night started as a Musical Theatre Guild of Butler gathering that brought its community together for a winter event. Now, its revamped version aims to give that experience and more to guests.

Jan. 9 will be the first Twelfth Night hosted by the guild in years and it will be a fundraiser for the Musical Theatre Guild and Hobnob Theatre Company.

Karen O’Donnell, president of the Musical Theatre Guild of Butler Board of Directors, said making Twelfth Night a joint venture with Hobnob is also what led it to becoming a night of entertainment. Hobnob will provide an improv show at the event, which will be the main entertainment for the night.

“It was more of a social at that point. It would be a potluck. A lot of times there was also entertainment involved,” O’Donnell said of previous Twelfth Nights. “We decided we would make it a co-event and whatever was raised would be split between the two.”

Ken Smith, who co-founded Hobnob with his wife, Elizabeth Smith, said the show will be performed by regulars of the company’s First Fridays Improv nights. He also said the nature of improv made it easy to get on board with Twelfth Night.

“We’re super excited to be getting more people involved, especially in the improv team,” Smith said. “The nice thing about improv is it is unrehearsed by nature so it is a low-commitment way to put something together that's still fun.”

Smith also said he hopes Twelfth Night is a chance to introduce more people to improv or even theater in general, because Hobnob and the guild rely on community artists to contribute to their productions, not just monetarily but creatively.

“We really view what we do as just fostering a community of theater artists,” Smith said. “We’re always looking for other ways to do that. It’s helpful to pull new people in and new performers.”

Twelfth Night opens its doors at 7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 9, at the Musical Theatre Guild, 100 Memorial Drive in Butler. Tickets are $20 per person, and can be purchased online at mtgbutler.org.