Improv Everywhere is a worldwide federation of improvisers and pranksters who stage spontaneous street theater scenes. The organization is an evolution of the flash mob phenomenon, wherein a group of people employ internet and mobile technologies to cause some kind of public disruption for a few minutes — spontaneously singing a Beatles song in the handbag department at Macy’s, let’s say — then disperse, leaving onlookers befuddled and bemused. Chances are one of Improv Everywhere’s scenes, or as they call them, ‘missions’ — like Food Court — the Musical, Frozen Trafalgar Square or Slo-Mo Home Depot — has crossed your radar.
Media coverage — and it has been extensive — of the Improv Everywhere missions has been primarily dumped into the ‘oddity’ genre — the same genre as the story about the guy who accidentally let the $12,000 engagement ring sail away in a helium balloon, or the grandmother who clocked a burglar with a canned ham. But Improv Everywhere deserves deeper analysis. The group is participating in a significant shift that’s taking place in the culture. This month the New Museum in New York City hosted a discussion with the group’s founders to talk about and show video of its performances. As a symbol of the times, Improv Everywhere ranks with The Merry Pranksters of the ‘Flower Power’ movement of the 1960s. (It is no coincidence that one of the merriest of the Merry Pranksters was Del Close, a major figure in modern improv theater.)
On the Meta level, what Improv Everywhere is saying to the mainstream culture is this: We do not do things or see things the same way as you.
With their clever disruptions of the status quo, the IE (how’s that for irony?) performances are a form of social protest. The games they play are political statements. This is a group of smart, tech savvy, photogenic, funny, subversive people telling the rest of the world that they perform at their own tempo and pitch, use different tactics, communicate in new ways. They are GameChangers of the first order. They understand instinctively how and why networks form. They know that with improvisation, a group can focus on the objective and be productive with very little planning and zero expectations as to outcomes. All this should hit anyone conducting business in the Networked World like a canned ham to the noggin tossed by a mad grandma.
By taking the familiar and making it strange, by shaking up commonplace scenarios, they are telling the world, in the gentlest possible terms but with a great degree of certitude and not a little desperation, that we all have it in us to rouse ourselves from our workaday lethargy and become more aware in the world. IE’s form of theater calls as much attention to the audience behaviors as to the performers themselves. They crack a mirror in the face of the mundane.
They’re showing us that the wherewithal to get together and do something extraordinary exists right smack in our everyday midst. If we look at things just a little differently, we can see it. And if we can see it, we can be it.
Tags: Home Depot, Home Depot Slo Mo, Improv Everywhere, Ken Kesey, Merry Pranksters, Networked World, Political Statement, Protest, Street Theater, Trafalgar Square Musical, Work
Great post Mike! As usual you’re right on top of things! Improv Everywhere are definitely GameChangers supreme! If you haven’t seen it already take a look at an incredible mission that they completed at Grand Central Station in New York.http://thresholdblogazine.com/journal-old/2008/2/21/frozen-in-time.html. Hope to catch them live soon!