Improv Everywhere

Improv Everywhere
FoundedNew York, 2001
FounderCharlie Todd
TypeOrganization
FocusComedic performance art group
Area served
US and worldwide
MethodVarious missions and events organized locally and globally
Websiteimproveverywhere.com

Improv Everywhere (often abbreviated 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 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 or even thousands 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 the group was created two years prior to the flash mob trend, and the group has an apolitical nature.[1]

While Improv Everywhere was created years before YouTube, the group has grown in notoriety since joining the site in April 2006. To date, Improv Everywhere's videos have been viewed over 470 million times on YouTube.[2] They have over 1.9 million YouTube subscribers.[2] In 2007, the group shot a television pilot for NBC.[3] In May 2009, HarperCollins released a book about Improv Everywhere, Causing a Scene[4] The book, written by founder Charlie Todd and senior agent Alex Scordelis, is a behind-the-scenes look at some of the group's stunts. In 2013, a feature-length documentary about Improv Everywhere premiered at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. The film, titled We Cause Scenes, was released digitally on iTunes, Netflix and other platforms in 2014.[5]

In 2019, Improv Everywhere produced the Disney+ live-action series Pixar In Real Life, which premiered on 12 November 2019, with eleven episodes released monthly.[6][7]

  1. ^ "FAQ". Improv Everywhere. Retrieved 2008-10-05.
  2. ^ a b Improv Everywhere's channel on YouTube
  3. ^ "NBC Pickups". Variety. New York: Reed Elseiver. 29 January 2007. Retrieved 15 December 2009.
  4. ^ Todd, Charlie; Scordelis, Alex (19 May 2009). Causing scenes at amazon.com. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0061703638.
  5. ^ "We Cause Scenes". wecausescenes.com.
  6. ^ "Pixar In Real Life". Improv Everywhere. 2019-12-02. Retrieved 2020-05-30.
  7. ^ Improv Everywhere [@ImprovEvery] (2019-11-15). "Yeah, they are releasing them one at a time. There are 12" (Tweet). Retrieved 2020-05-30 – via Twitter.

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