The shared experience of absurdity - Charlie Todd

I started Improv Everywhere about ten years ago when I moved to New York City with an interest in acting and comedy. Because I was new to the city, I didn't have access to a stage, so I decided to create my own in public places.

So the first project we're gonna take a look at is the very first No Pants subway ride. Now, this took place in January of 2002, and this woman is the star of the video. She doesn't know she's being filmed; she's being filmed with a hidden camera. This is on the 6:00 train in New York City, and this is the first stop along the line.

These are two Danish guys who come in and sit down next to the hidden camera, and that's me right there in a brown coat. It's about 30 degrees outside; I'm wearing a hat, I'm wearing a scarf, and the girl's going to notice me right here. As you'll see, now I'm not wearing pants. So at this point, she's noticed me, but in New York, there are weirdos, and in any given train car, one person's not that unusual. She goes back to reading her book, which is unfortunately titled "Rape." Not sure.

So she's noticed the unusual thing, but she's gone back to her normal life. Now, in the meantime, I have six friends who are waiting at the next six consecutive stops in their underwear as well. They're gonna be entering this car one by one, will act as though we don't know each other, and we'll act as if it's just an unfortunate mistake we've made forgetting our pants on this cold January day.

So at this point, she decides to put the rape book away. She decides to be a little bit more aware of her surroundings. Now, in the meantime, the two Danish guys to the left of the camera, they're cracking up. They think this is the funniest thing they've ever seen before. Watch her make eye contact with them. I love that moment in this video because before it became a shared experience, it was something that was a little bit scary or something that was at least confusing to her. And then once it became a shared experience, it was funny and something that she could laugh at.

So the train is now pulling into the third stop along the sixth line. The video won't show everything; this goes on for another four stops. A total of seven guys enter anonymously in their underwear. At the eighth stop, a girl came in with a giant duffel bag, and now she had pants for sale for a dollar, like you might sell batteries or candy on the train.

We all very matter-of-factly bought a pair of pants, put them on, and said, “Thank you! That's exactly what I needed today.” Exited without revealing what had happened and went in all different directions. So that's a still from the video there, and I love that girl's reaction so much. Watching that videotape later that day inspired me to keep doing what I do.

Really, one of the points of Improv Everywhere is to cause a scene in a public place that is a positive experience for other people. It's a prank, but it's a prank that gives somebody a great story to tell. Her reaction inspired me to do a second annual No Pants subway ride, and we continue to do it every year. This past January, we did the tenth annual No Pants subway ride, where a diverse group of 3,500 people rode the train in their underwear in New York, almost every single train line in the city, and also in 50 other cities around the world people participated.

As I started taking improv class at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and meeting other creative people, and other performers and comedians, I started amassing a mailing list of people who wanted to do these types of projects, so I could do more large-scale projects.

Well, one day I was walking through Union Square, and I saw this building which had just been built in 2005, and there was a girl in one of the windows, and she was dancing. It was very peculiar because it was dark out, but she was backlit with fluorescent lighting. She was very much onstage, and I couldn't figure out why she was doing it. After about 15 seconds, her friend appeared; she had been hiding behind a display, and they laughed and hugged each other and ran away.

So it seemed like maybe she had been dared to do this. I got inspired by that, looking at the entire facade. There were 70 total windows, and I knew what I had to do. So this project is called "Look Up More." We had 70 actors dressed in black. This was completely unauthorized; we didn't let the stores know we were coming.

I stood in the park getting signals. The first signal was for everybody to hold up these four-foot tall letters that spelled out "Look Up More", the name of the project. The second signal was for everybody to do jumping jacks together. You'll see that start right here.

Then we had dancing. We had everyone dance, and then we had dance solos where only one person would dance, and everybody would point at him. So then I gave a new hand signal which signaled the next soloist down below and he danced. There were several other activities; we had people jumping up and down, people dropping to the ground, and I was standing just anonymously in a sweatshirt, putting my hand on and off of a trash can to signal the advancement.

Because he was in Union Square Park, right by a subway station, there were hundreds of people by the end who stopped and looked up and watched what we were doing. There's a better photo of it. So that particular event was inspired by a moment that I happened to stumble upon.

The next project I want to show was given to me in an email from a stranger. A high school kid in Texas wrote me in 2006 and said you should get as many people as possible to put on blue polo shirts and khaki pants and go into a Best Buy and stand around. I wrote this high school kid back immediately, and he said, “Yes, you were correct! I think I'll try to do that this weekend; thank you.”

So here's the video. So again, this is 2005; this is the Best Buy in New York City. We had about 80 people show up to participate, entering one by one. There was an 8-year-old girl, a 10-year-old girl, and there was also a 65-year-old man who participated, so a very diverse group of people.

I told people, “Don't work, don't actually do work, but also don't shop, just stand around and don't face products.” Now, you can see the regular employees by the ones that have the yellow tags on their shirt; everybody else is one of our actors. The lower-level employees thought it was very funny, and in fact, several of them went to go get their camera from the break room and took photos with us. A lot of them made jokes about trying to get us to go to the back to get heavy television sets for customers.

The managers and the security guards, on the other hand, did not find it particularly funny. You can see them in this footage; they're wearing either a yellow shirt or a black shirt. We were there for probably about 10 minutes before the manager decided to dial 911.

So they started running around telling everybody that the cops were coming. “Watch out, the cops are coming!” You can see the cops in this footage right here. That's a cop wearing black right there being filmed with a hidden camera. Ultimately, the police had to inform Best Buy management that it was not, in fact, illegal to wear a blue polo shirt.

We had been there for twenty minutes; we were happy to exit the store. One thing that managers were trying to do was to track down our cameras, and they caught a couple of my guys who had hidden cameras in duffle bags. But the one camera guy they never caught was the guy that went in just with the blank tape and went over to the Best Buy camera department and just put his tape in one of their cameras, pretended to shoot.

So I like that concept of using their own technology against them. I think our best projects are ones that are site-specific and happen at a particular place for a reason. One morning, I was riding the subway; I had to make a transfer at the 53rd Street stop, where there were these two giant escalators, and it's a very depressing place to be in the morning—so crowded.

So I decided to try to stage something that could make it as happy as possible for one morning. So this was in the winter of 2009 at 8:30 in the morning. It's morning rush hour—it's very cold outside. People are coming in from Queens, transferring from the E train to the 6:00 train, and they're going up these giant escalators on their way to their jobs.

So there's a photograph that illustrates it a little bit better. He gave two thousand high-fives that day, and he washed his hands before and afterward—did not get sick. This was done without permission, although no one seemed to care.

So I'd say over the years one of the most common criticisms I see of Improv Everywhere, left anonymously in YouTube comments, is "these people have too much time on their hands." You know, not everybody's gonna like everything you do, and I certainly have developed thick skin thanks to Internet comments.

But that one's always bothered me because we don't have too much time on our hands. The participants in Improv Everywhere events have just as much leisure time as any other New Yorkers; they just occasionally choose to spend it in an unusual way. You know, every Saturday and Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people each fall gather in football stadiums to watch games, and I've never seen anybody comment, looking at a football game, saying, "All those people in the stands; they have too much time on their hands."

And of course they don't; it's a perfectly wonderful way to spend the weekend afternoon watching a football game in a stadium. But I think it's also a perfectly valid way to spend an afternoon freezing in place with 200 people in Grand Central Terminal, or dressing up like a Ghostbuster and running through the New York Public Library, or listening to the same MP3 as 3,000 other people and dancing silently in a park, or bursting into song in a grocery store as part of a spontaneous musical, or diving into the ocean in Coney Island wearing formal attire.

You know, as kids, we're taught to play, and we're never given a reason why we should play. It's just acceptable that play is a good thing. I think it's sort of the point of Improv Everywhere is that there is no point—there doesn't have to be a point. We don't need a reason; as long as it's fun and it seems like it's gonna be a funny idea and it seems like the people who witness it will also have a fun time, then that's enough for us.

I think as adults we need to learn that there's no right or wrong way to play. Thank you very much.