How was your day today? Same old same old? As creatures of habit, it is very easy to get caught in a rut in our daily lives. We have the same hours at work, the same classes at the same times, the same practice schedules. Sometimes we are just buying time until the next chance to cut loose and have a good break from the routine.
Now imagine during one of your boring, usual, plain old days suddenly you saw something definately not boring, usual, or plain. On the subway you saw a dozen people without their pants off. Three people have their desktops inside a Starbucks. Anton Chekov has suddenly made a visit to the local Barnes & Noble! Would that make you sit up and take notice?
Too often in our daily grind we forget to take notice of the lives going on around us. We get so uber-focused on our own situation that we fail to just Look Up More. This group is here to change that. What began in New York City has become a Global sensation. Maybe you have even been lucky enough to see one of their happenings (a theatrical event occurs in non-theatre locations that only happen once, seemingly spontaneously, and used to ignite an audience response).
Improv Everyone has a very basic mission: Cause joy and chaos in public places. What began as a way to simply entertain the mundane days of New York City residents has spread like wildfire across the country and now the globe to give people something to talk about. To allow our lives to become nothing but one track on repeat is a sad fate that drives us to unhappiness. It is excited individuals like the agents of Improv Everywhere and the groups that have spawned from it that make extraordinary events happen. Shockingly they rarely get press time. Usually they stage a mission, a crowd draws, the mission ends, agents disperse and all that is left is the reports from witnesses (and of course the footage some agents manage to sneak in).
Just to give you a taste of what they have accomplished here are some of their mission titles:
-Cell Phone Symphony
-Food Court Musical
-Frozen Grand Central
-Subway Living Room in Prague
-Global Roundup
Here my hope for you, the reader. Add a little spontaneity to your life. Do something that turns heads. Shock and run simply for the joy of knowing someone got a laugh out of it. Why allow our lives and those around us to go on without something to talk about. Same old same old should not cut it. Get out there and take a smile with you.
This is good advice. This is something I would like to share with my mother as I feel she is stuck. Thank you.