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Chances are good that anyone who's ever been witness to an undead army of zombies roaming the streets or peered through a cloud of feathers at a mob of gentle warriors furiously pillow-bashing each other, only to then watch them all disperse as quickly as they came, has asked around a bit an came up with the name Improv Everywhere. Chances are even better, however, that this person got some bad information.Something of a mature older brother to the rebellious young flash mob, Improv Everywhere has become a proprietary eponym, along the lines of Band-Aid and Kleenex, for all sorts of pre-planned displays of coordinated public ridiculousness. And while there is much to love in a seemingly spontaneous outbreak of applause in a hotel lobby or hundreds of headphone-clad, moneymaker-shakin' club kids grooving to an imperceptible groove, what IE does feels a bit more refined. Sophisticated, even. A few steps closer to legitimate theater. It could be that the troupe spun off from New York's Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, quite possibly the finest repository of longform improv (in contrast to the shortform of Whose Line is it Anyways and theater sports) in the land. But it could also be their predilection for putting on mini-musicals, complete with catchy, toe-tappin' tunes and rudimentary choreography. Their latest is an ode to that in-betweenest of meals: Lunch. Performed in the atrium of the Trump Tower during the titular meal hour, Lunch: The Musical is not only the greatest song ever written that uses the word spork, it might just be Improv Everywhere's greatest performance yet.
I was wondering, has Improv Everywhere been used (or misused) in the past to harass people?
ReplyDeletehttp://areyoutargeted.com/2009/11/15/army-of-losers/
While there certainly may be copycat groups with less-than-noble intentions, Improv Everywhere repeatedly makes it very clear that they have no malicious intent whatsoever. From their website: "We’re out to prove that a prank doesn’t have to involve humiliation or embarrassment; it can simply be about making someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them." Here's a great interview with IE's Charlie Todd on The Sound of Young America in which he explains that, for them, it's so much more interesting to do a prank where "no one is the butt of the joke." http://www.maximumfun.org/sound/improv.mp3
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