We Cause Scenes Page #5

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It was conceived

as a stage show.

The idea was,

what if we had a-a show

where the audience,

whether they knew it

or not going into it,

were told to become the actors.

We asked people

to download the track.

Put it on to a portable device

and then show up at the Upright

Citizens Brigade Theatre

for this midnight show

on a Saturday night.

All right, I'm paused.

- Played paused.

- Say it again?

We had a countdown clock

that Tyler Walker made.

Two.

Mp3, engaged.

Welcome to the Mp3 Experiment.

My name is Steve and I will be

your omnipotent voice tonight.

There were some simple instructions

like breathing and then...

you know, stretching

your arms out or whatever

and then, pretty soon everyone

was told to get on stage.

All right, don't be

the last person on stage.

All we had,

this all-powerful narrator

that is telling people

things to do.

Jump!

Simple, joyful things.

Meant to just sort of be

this euphoric, fun party.

I dropped my bubbles.

It was one of those things

where your face literally hurts.

I could not stop smiling.

Let's see you doing,

having fun.

Balloons for everyone!

Everybody's doing it and

everybody's committing to it.

That's such a comforting feel.

Hug as many of your new

friends as you can.

At the end of the show, people

were asked to get their belongings

and go upstairs and go out into

Eight Avenue and 26th Street.

We had a million ideas for what would

happen once you got on the street

but budgetary constrains uh,

ended up making it so,

John Wards showed up, who's

got a big, great, white beard

and we rented

a Santa Claus outfit

and he came up

and he handed out candy canes.

Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!

It was very cool.

to have a whole audience of a show,

still participating in the show,

you know, outside,

and I think that did make me realize,

like, this could happen anywhere.

I met Charlie Todd uh,

through improv classes

at the Upright Citizens

Brigade Theatre.

I think we had a couple of

classes together, maybe.

And I convinced him to leave

a story of Queens,

come live three blocks from UCB

and then I got to become

a collaborator

by birch of sharing

a living room with Charlie.

When I lived

with Anthony and Ken

a lot of ideas

would just be generated

with three of us

hanging out and talking.

And it was this same thing when I moved

in to Manhattan with Chris Kula.

We had just found out that U2 was gonna

be coming to Madison Square Garden

for a week of shows.

The two of us

came up with this idea,

what if we staged a fake

U2 concert on our rooftop,

across the street

from Madison Square Garden

on the very night

of the real U2 show.

I played in this cover band,

it kind of was a no-brainer

like, so we can get the Enormous

Television band to play?

I said, "Yeah, absolutely. "

The fact that I lived

across the street

from where U2 was going to be

playing a concert.

I had access to my roof.

U2 was known to play roofs and my

roommate was in a band, you know,

all those things coming together, it

was like, that's-this is too perfect.

I have to do this.

Well, what we didn't have

was a singer.

So I had to figure out who of the Improv

Everywhere family would be right to play Bono.

I ended up deciding to ask

my friend, Ptolemy Slocum.

It's a bit of a daunting task.

The only thing

that saved me was that,

I knew I was gonna be

very far away from every one.

But, I don't think Bono

has freckles.

In between coming up with the idea

and actually staging the project,

my day job gave me an

ultimatum.

Either get more involved

or be laid off.

It was sort of a cross-roads

for me where I could've said,

"Okay, the safe thing would

be to stay in this company.

To keep my healthcare. "

Or I could take this opportunity

of Improv Everywhere,

started to become something way bigger

than I expected it would ever be

and see if I can give that a go and somehow

be my own boss and-and have that be my job.

You know,

I remember coming up here.

I was really nervous about

setting this equipment up here.

'Cause it's about noon.

We're not doing the prank

for seven hours.

I don't think they'll even

be able to see me anyway.

- Yeah. - I just wanna go

for the authenticity of it.

Dan Demon

was playing Adam Clayton.

So, we had to spray paint

his hair white.

Chris Kula

was playing Larry Mullen, Jr.

We figured nobody really knew what

Larry Mullen, Jr. looked like anyway.

Ptolemy found a black wig that

sort of looked like Bono's hair.

Terry Jen, who was playing

The Edge, is an Asian man.

There was really

nothing we could do

to change the fact

that Terry was Asian.

Uh... so for his costume, he wore a

skull cap and he wore a fake goatee.

Tyler, I'm gonna have you

on the roof with Zach.

Camera, you-you need a tape,

right?

I do, yeah.

I'm supposed to have a spare of fives.

Our production values were

increasing just a little bit.

Some people had this nice,

three chip cameras

but at that time,

the documentation

was still more centered

around photographs and text.

Up to a 130 people are gonna

come to that location?

Maybe it's 150?

And it's only 30.

I don't know but 130 people

said they were coming.

I decided it would help

if we had some people

who pretended like they were

just U2 fans going to the show

who were not in, on it.

Who all of a sudden ran down to this

block to sort-of see to the crowd.

Charlie told everyone

that wanted to participate

to show up in the steps

of the library.

So when I arrived, there's already

about 75 eager participants

who were fans of I.E. this was, most

of their first time doing a prank.

Tell everybody to go now.

I'm-I'm worried it's gonna start

raining so let's start it.

I remember looking at the band and

they all seemed kind of nervous.

I was very nervous.

Were we gonna get in trouble?

Where they gonna be able

to hear us?

How loud is it really gonna be?

You know, I didn't know!

Bono!

All right, some start.

Thank you guys for helping,

this is gonna be great.

Are you guys ready

to hear one band U2?

Who are the biggest

band in the world? U2!

It was chaotic and I don't think

I really thought about this

but what was so cool was seeing

all of the neighbors show up.

The sound system was

cranked up and distorting,

which actually I think people

thought, that is helping.

It just sounded like

loud rock music from a roof.

And certainly, from a distance,

recognizably U2 music as well.

From a distance, it was U2.

A very out of key, U2.

Or at least vocally.

I don't care if we were

convincing or unconvincing

but that moment

had a lot of power to it.

They finished their...

fourth song and...

the crowd demanded an encore.

One more song!

It was a little bit of a

problem

because they didn't have

one more song.

They only learned four songs.

So we went back to the beginning

and started doing uh...

the first song over again,

which is a bad idea

because the police got there

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