Improv Everywhere
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Improv Everywhere (often IE) is a comedic performance art group based in New York City, formed in 2001 by Charlie Todd. Its slogan is "We Cause Scenes."
The group carries out non-threatening pranks, which they call "missions" in public places. The stated goal of these missions is to cause scenes of "chaos and joy." Some of the group's missions use hundreds of performers and are similar to flash mobs, while other missions utilize only a handful of performers. Improv Everywhere has stated that they do not identify their work with the term flash mob, in part because their site was created two years prior to flash mob trend. [1]
Improv Everywhere has been profiled by many national and international media outlets including The New York Times, The Today Show, and ABC's Nightline.[2][3] Todd was interviewed on an episode of This American Life in 2005. While touching briefly on two missions ("No Pants" and "The Moebius"), the show focused on "Best Gig Ever" and "Ted's Birthday", and how they created unintended reactions. Improv Everywhere was also featured in the pilot episode for This American Life's television show on Showtime.[4]
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[edit] Background
Many of the group's longtime participants met through the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City. The owners of the theatre, The Upright Citizens Brigade, had a television series from 1998-2000 on Comedy Central. While primarily a sketch comedy show, the UCB often filmed their characters in public places with hidden cameras and showed the footage under the end credits. Both the UCB's show and their teachings on improv have been influential to Improv Everywhere. Todd himself currently teaches at the UCB.[5]
[edit] Missions
While long-time members of Improv Everywhere often participate in missions, many are open to the public. IE has organized and carried out over 80 missions, from synchronized swimming in a park fountain to repeating a five-minute sequence of events in a Starbucks coffee shop over and over again for an hour to flooding a Best Buy store with members dressed exactly like the staff. All the missions share a certain modus operandi: Members ("agents") play their roles entirely straight, not breaking character or betraying that they are acting. IE claims the missions are benevolent, aiming to give the observers a laugh and an experience. However, some operations involve the disruption of business operations.
[edit] Police intervention
Some IE events have attracted police attention. The annual "No Pants" event involves a large number of people riding a subway, all claiming to have forgotten their pants by accident. During a No Pants mission on 22 January 2006, the New York City Police Department handcuffed eight members of the group while on the subway (according to the group, over 160 people had participated in the city-wide event). The eight handcuffed participants had been riding the 6 train and were taken into custody and issued summonses for disorderly conduct. After appearing in court, these charges were dismissed.[6] On January 10, 2009, over 1,200 people participated in the No Pants ride in New York, and over 1,000 more participated in 21 additional cities around the world [7]
On 21 May 2005 IE staged a fake U2 street concert on a rooftop in New York hours before the real U2 were scheduled to perform at Madison Square Garden. A crowd formed, most of which thought that the people on the rooftop were actually U2. However, just like at the filming of the band's Where the Streets Have No Name video in 1987, the police eventually shut the performance down, but not before IE was able to exhaust their four-song repertoire and get most of the way through an encore repeat of "Vertigo". The crowd, even those who had realized that this was a prank, shouted "one more song!," and then "let them play!" when the police officers arrived. This mission was number 23 on the VH1 countdown of the "40 Greatest Pranks."[8]
During the Best Buy Invasion mission, an 80-person IE team entered a Best Buy store dressed in blue shirts and khaki pants—the uniform colors of Best Buy employees—and answered questions for customers (though denying being an employee of Best Buy if asked). Charlie Todd used this mission at an interview as an example of their missions being legal, as he says that the employees did call the cops, but when they arrived they just said that they couldn't do anything except to ask the IE agents to leave the store.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Main site of Improv Everywhere
- Improv Everywhere Global, for the creation of groups and missions outside of New York
- A NY Times profile on the group
- Audio Interview with creator Charlie Todd on The Sound of Young America: MP3 Link
- Charlie Todd on The Today Show: [8]
- This American Life radio episode
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