Improv Everywhere

I love Amy Poehler, and I love The State, and I love all the people from The State and I love sketch comedy (when it’s good) but I kinda can’t get behind improv a lot of the time.  The kind of improv where everyone is in multi-colored T shirts and scampering about on stage, and taking location requests from the audience and just “going with it” until  the whole improv troupe (troupe, guys?  really?) is improvising (aka “pretending”) that they’re taking some wacky hayride together in postwar Germany on their way to a jello wrestling competition.  Maybe it has something to do with my hatred of contemporary theater, or the fact that my brain has been so glutted with CGI Photoshopped fake-edited bullshit that I have absolutely no ability to suspend disbelief anymore.  Probably the latter.

But as is the way of life, conundrums exist and as discomfiting as I find watching improv troupes to be , I could not feel more positively towards IMPROV EVERYWHERE.  A network of undercover “agents”, Improv Everywhere was started in 2001, causing “scenes of spontaneous chaos and joy in public places”. Their latest victory takes place in a supermarket in Queens and it’s just awesome.  Even I liked it, and I fucking hate musicals.  I love people who are able to see even the most mundane daily task or interaction as an opportunity for lightness, humor and yes , even  ironic singing.

Keep it up guys, you’ll melt my miserable heart yet!!