Improv Everywhere

I think if I want to know the first-hand information, I have to interview someone. ( Not included the person I know.) I will start to do this when I am free. So I am going to paste the information from the organization"Improv Everywhere".

1.Why do you do this?

Improv Everywhere is, at its core, about having fun. We’re big believers in “organized fun”. Our missions are a fun source of entertainment for the participants, those who happen to see us live, and those watch our videos. We get satisfaction from coming up with an awesome idea and making it come to life. In the process we hopefully bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give Improv Everywhere is, at its core, about having fun. We’re big believers in “organized fun”. Our missions are a fun source of entertainment for the participants, those who happen to see us live, and those watch our videos. We get satisfaction from coming up with an awesome idea and making it come to life. In the process we hopefully bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers a unique experience and a great story to tell. 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.

2.How did it start?

In August of 2001, I went out to a West Village bar with my college buddies Brandon Arnold and Jon Karpinos. On a whim we decided to pull a prank where we would enter separately and they would approach and identify me as musician Ben Folds. It worked. I spent three hours in the bar as “Ben Folds,” signing autographs, posing for photos, and drinking on the house. At the end of the night, I left the bar without revealing it had been a hoax. I had always been a prankster, but this experience got me excited about the potential of staging creative pranks in public places. The best part was everyone had a good time. As a comedian and actor new to the city, I discovered I could create my own performances rather than waiting around for someone to give me an opportunity. Bored at my temp job the next Monday morning, I wrote the story down and put it on the web. Improv Everywhere was born.

3.How can you call it “improv”? Your missions are clearly pre-planned!

We are not claiming that what we are doing is improv. The majority of Improv Everywhere Agents met each other through the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York, the nation’s most awesome improv comedy theatre and school. While staging organized stunts in public places is obviously completely different from improv comedy in a theatre, the two activities do share similar techniques. We stay in character at all costs and usually have no script beyond the mission’s idea. We have no clue how people are going to react to us, and that is where the improvisation comes in. If I could go back in time and chose a different name, I would. After 12 years, I think I’m stuck with it.

4. Aren’t these flash mobs?

No. Improv Everywhere was created about 2 years before the first “flash mob.” While some of our missions may have certain similarities to a flash mob (large numbers of people engaging in a coordinated activity in a public place), we have never embraced that term. Some missions use just a few folks while others might use thousands, depending on what suits the idea. Also, our projects are rarely over in a flash. Many last for hours.

Over the years the term “flash mob” has been beaten to death by the media and co-opted by marketers. It’s become a lazy, catch-all term to describe things as varied as people dancing at a Black Eyed Peas concert to surprise Oprah Winfrey to teens meeting up to commit crimes in Chicago. I’m not sure what it even means anymore, and I don’t really care to use it to describe what we do.

5.Has any mission ever gone terribly wrong?

We’re not looking for legal trouble, but on occasion it has found us. See Even Better Than The Real Thing, No Pants 2k6, and Best Buy for examples of missions where the police got involved. We may break store policies or park regulations from time to time, but we do not break the law. It’s unfortunate whenever a cop has his time wasted responding to something we do.

*The books I bought from Amazon had just arrived on Saturday. I really need some time to read them so I can't upload the excerpts to my blog in the short time. I will try to finish reading them as fast as I can!