Improv Everywhere's Harry Potter takes Penn Station commuters by surprise

The group Improv Everywhere sent an 11-year-old dressed as Harry Potter to Penn Station to ask commuters and workers where he could find Platform 9 3/4.

|
Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros. Pictures/AP
The 'Harry Potter' films star Emma Watson (l.), Rupert Grint (center), and Daniel Radcliffe (r.).

In the “Harry Potter” novels by J.K. Rowling, a desperate Harry doesn’t get much help from the commuters and workers at King’s Cross Station when he’s searching for the magical Platform 9 and 3/4. 

So what would happen if an 11-year-old dressed as Harry Potter went to New York's Penn Station and asked for help in finding his departure location? 

The group Improv Everywhere decided to find out, sending 11-year-old actor Sebastian Thomas to the train station dressed as Harry, complete with white owl and old-fashioned school trunks, as part of their “Movies in Real Life” series. The group carries out what they call “missions,” activities which “create scenes of chaos and joy in public places,” according to their website.

Many commuters seemed very excited to see Harry, with some smiling and capturing video of him on their phones. Thomas’s stops included a ticket booth and an Auntie Ann’s pretzel stand, where he inquired whether pretzels were good for owls.

One commuter knew the answer to his departure query and pointed him towards platform nine, telling him, “Run really hard at the pillar. You’ll get there.” Alas, Thomas tried it with no results.

Check out the full video.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Improv Everywhere's Harry Potter takes Penn Station commuters by surprise
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2013/1126/Improv-Everywhere-s-Harry-Potter-takes-Penn-Station-commuters-by-surprise
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe