Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
On a cold January day in 2002, an aspiring actor, Charlie Todd, and a few of his friends took off their pants in a New York subway car acting as though it was nothing out of the ordinary. They got all the right wide-eyed stares from their fellow passengers. The shock and confusion was just what their urban “prank” group was looking for and so the act caught on.
“The guys who did it had such a good time that the following year they told their friends and the size doubled to about 25 people and in subsequent years it kept expanding in New York City where it would be 60 people, 150 people, 3 hundred people, then 9 hundred people two years ago, and then 12 hundred people in New York last year,” Alex Scordelis, a member of this prank group explained. “So it just keeps growing, and keeps spreading to new cities.”
Alex is a “Senior Agent” of Improv Everywhere, the group responsible for dozens of “scenes of joy and chaos.” Among these scenes: a spontaneous musical in a mall’s food court, an invasion of Best Buy with agents wearing the store’s blue and khaki uniform, and the expanding no-pants subway ride. But this particular hilarious mission isn’t the only thing that is catching world-wide curiosity. The fundamental idea of public-performance-turned-comedy has sparked interest all around the world.
With the internet as its core, a community of pranksters, performers and flash-mobers has developed and grown into a phenomenon. While all have slightly different mission statements, the principal aim is to “make people stop and have a bit of a laugh,” as Jessi Tilbrook, a prankster in Sydney, Australia, said. They share prank success stories, borrow ideas from each other and coordinate world-wide pranks.
These proliferating groups of pranksters are without a doubt blurring the line between public and private, between audience and participant and between stage and street.
Margaret Katcher is an All Things Considered intern at NPR.
Want to see more flashmob fun? Two other interns filmed a flashmob in Philadelphia at the Art Museum in June.
This is just the kind of story that I hear every now and then on All Things Considered that makes me stop what I’m doing, and brings a smile to my face or makes me laugh out loud. As long as “pranks” such as the “pantless event” hurt no one, they are wonderful opportunities to break the daily routine, perhaps getting perfect strangers to talk to one another. Cheers for a great story!!
underwhere in the subway system is this brief exposure? great fun to hear about it!
Such an entertaining piece, well done! It almost makes me want to take my pants off in public. Almost.
[...] did you do for intern edition? I did a story on Improv Everywhere and similar public prankster groups. And I took photos of delicious breakfast [...]
I love to take my pants off outside!….I didn’t know that I could do it with a good excuse! I’m joining. Thanks for the info.
That’s just the thing we need to remind us not to take ourselves too seriously!! Nothing like a few naked New Yorkers sitting on a disgusting train seat to make you laugh.