Broadway On the Streets
When I was younger, I liked to think that any average day could magically be turned into a scene from a Broadway musical. The feverish dancing and catchy music was incredibly enthralling to me and the fact that these actors could burst out into song at any normal incident without judgement or care was so amazing. I wanted more than anything to live my life like a musical because every thought and event was that much more dramatic. But as I got older, I realized that my dream of living my life like a musical was much farther from my grasp than I thought, until I stumbled upon http://improveverywhere.com. Improv Everywhere is a site where random, everyday people all get together and "create scenes of chaos and joy". The way they do this is by creating "missions" and sending the mission guidelines out to everyone who has joined their mailing list. These missions are a fun source of entertainment that usually involve big groups of people cooperating to pull pranks on the rest of the public. Here are a couple of examples from the site: - Get a bunch of people to stand behind someone and pretend they are the Verizon “network,” like in those commercials. - Get a bunch of people to stare up at the sky and pretend like they are looking at something amazing. - Act like a stranger (or an agent) is someone important by putting secret service agents all around him. - Act like a stranger (or an agent) is famous and have a fake paparazzi mob him. - Do something involving zombies and/or the Thriller dance. - Have tons of people go into a store and buy the exact same thing. (Or request an item that doesn’t exist. Or everyone pay in pennies. Or order the same small item in a fast food chain.) It's extremely funny to watch and is such a simple form of entertainment. The greatest thing about the whole ordeal is that that people who aren't involved with the pranks are completely clueless as to what is going on and often don't know what to do. Some of the missions also include singing and dancing, which brings me back to my childhood dream of real-life musicals. One of the funniest pranks the Improv Everywhere team conducted was called "I Love Lunch! The Musical", which involved seven undercover agents who staged a spontaneous musical during lunch at the Trump Tower atrium, which is a popular lunch spot for tourists and people who work in the building. Hidden cameras were able to catch every inch of this hilarious event as bystanders watched with awe and amazement at this crazy spectacle. It's things like this and people like the Improv Everywhere team that make me stay true my childhood fantasy, and who knows, maybe one day soon I'll be able to participate in one of these spectacularly theatrical phenomenon myself.
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