POTSDAM – Get ready for a flash mob in Potsdam.

Improv Everywhere Founder, Charlie Todd, is coming to Clarkson University on Friday, April 22 with a scene to begin promptly at 5:30 p.m. on Cheel Lawn. The scene lasts for 40 minutes and will be followed by a workshop at 7 p.m.

Created in August of 2001, Improv Everywhere is a New York City-based prank collective that causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Its slogan is "We Cause Scenes."

Todd has been producing, directing, performing, and documenting the group's work for ten years and has executed over 100 missions involving tens of thousands of undercover agents.

Todd is also a performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York, and the author of Causing a Scene, a book about Improv Everywhere published by Harper Collins. Charlie Todd was born in Columbia, South Carolina and went to school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

IE has organized and carried out over 100 missions, from synchronized swimming in a

park fountain to repeating a five-minute sequence of events in a Starbucks coffee shop over and over again for an hour, from flooding a Best Buy store with members dressed

exactly like the staff to riding the New York City Subway without their pants.

All the missions share a certain modus operandi: Members ("agents") play their roles entirely straight, not breaking character or betraying that they are acting. IE claims the missions are benevolent, aiming to give the observers a laugh and an experience.