Improv Everywhere is an unorthodox comedy group based in New York City, formed in 2001 by Charlie Todd. Its slogan is "We Cause Scenes," which the group lives up to by executing non-demeaning pranks in public places. The events ("missions") organized by the group are often considered flash mobs, but the group's website insists that they have nothing to do with flash mobbing and that IE was created years before flash mobbing gained popularity.

Missions and pranks
While some missions are executed by long-time members of IE, many missions are open to the public. IE has organized and carried out over 70 missions, from synchronized swimming in a park fountain to repeating a short sequence of events in a Starbucks café every five minutes for an hour to flooding a Best Buy store with members dressed exactly like the staff. All share a certain modus operandi: The missions are benevolent, aiming to give the observers ("civilians") a laugh and an experience. Members ("agents") play their roles entirely straight, not breaking character or betraying that they are acting.

The group's most popular stunt is the annual No Pants event, which involves a large number of people riding a subway in the attire described, all claiming to have forgotten their pants by accident. The situation is solved by the lucky appearance of a pants vendor. This and several other missions have received national media attention. This event created controversy on 22 January 2006, when the New York City Police Department arrested eight members of the group while on the subway. According to the group, over 160 people participated in the city-wide event. The eight unlucky ones were riding the 6 train and were taken into custody and issued summonses for disorderly conduct. After appearing in court, these charges were dismissed. The event was repeated again in 2007, this time with over 300 participants and no police intervention.

Another more complex mission, done on 21 May 2005 involved the IE team staging a fake U2 street concert on a rooftop in New York hours before the real U2 were scheduled to perform at Madison Square Garden. The team was successful in that they were able to draw an enormous crowd, most of which thought that the people on the rooftop were actually U2. However, just like at the filming of the band's Where the Streets Have No Name video in 1987, the police eventually shut the performance down, but not before IE was able to exhaust their four-song repertoire and get most of the way through an encore repeat of "Vertigo". The mission ended on a high note, with the crowd (even those who had realized that this was a prank) shouting "one more song!," and then "let them play!" when the police officers arrived. This mission was number 23 on the VH1 countdown of the "40 Greatest Pranks."

Bio:
Like most high school kids, Charlie enjoyed playing pranks with his friends while growing up in Columbia, South Carolina.  He continued this hobby in college, engaging in prank wars with his roommates.  After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 2001, Charlie moved to New York City to pursue acting.  Frustrated with the near impossible task of becoming a working actor as an unknown 22-year-old, Charlie began staging his own undercover performances in public places around the city.  He created a website to document his work, and Improv Everywhere was born.  His lifelong hobby of pulling pranks was morphing into something more serious and more exciting.  Concurrently with his work with Improv Everywhere, Charlie studied improvisational comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.  Seven years later he now teaches the very classes he took when he was starting out, and performs weekly with his house team and his ridiculous wrestling federation, the UCBW.

The Improv Everywhere Live show is an hour of behind-the-scenes stories from Charlie’s unique personal experiences as the organizer of Improv Everywhere’s legendary missions. The show features video clips of all his most famous missions with Charlie’s live commentary and an interactive question and answer session.