When it comes to the character development, I’m still going deeper and deeper. What keeps you going after years of doing this? Assuming it’s not the blue paint. So as society’s cultural landscape changes, so does the Blue Man show. One thing about Blue Man Group is that we are essentially a cultural landscape reflector. It takes a lot of people to make up our community, not to mention the added personnel to load in, create, and tech a new show. The first time I saw that I remember thinking, how special it is to recognize these usually unseen people. I’ve always loved bows at the end of our show because the Blue Men stand there with the band and then turn to welcome on the crew to take a bow and there’s just as many, if not more crew, running the show than the Blue Men and band combined. How do you actually put on one of these shows? How has it changed over the years? We’re always looking for women or men to play the role. The character and company have been able to expand in massive part do to the women that have, and currently work for Blue Man Group. We’ve had women play the Blue Man character in the past and in fact some of the original ‘Blue Men’ from the early days of conception and experimentation in the streets of New York City were women. What people don’t get right away, if at all, is that the Blue Man character is genderless. What about a Blue Woman Group?īob Dylan would agree. There’s an endless quest to deepen one’s Blue Man character. Sometimes during internal Blue Man workshops we give each others’ Blue Men unique names reflective of a general first impression that we might see in each other, i.e.: Meany-McSimmons, Dorothy, Lucy, Eagle-Boy, Grumpy-want-a-Cracker mostly to make us laugh but also used as a way in, to break down performance habits so that we can rebuild into a new more pure state. Though they were originally named after the respective founders who originated each of their own roles: Chris (Wink), Matt (Goldman) and Phil (Stanton). As the eyes are often seen as the window to the soul, people find the Blue Man character to be quite open and intriguing after they’ve worked through there “what the heck is this guy all about?!” phase.Ĭurrently they are known as Left, Center and Right. The special thing that happens upon application is that all physical facial features of the performer are stripped away leaving their eyes as the only real focal point. The makeup is a unique Blue Man blue hue however in a very basic grease paint formula. Though there is a folklore anecdote about Chris Wink (founder) having shown an art project from his second grade days which was a drawing of a whole bunch of blue people, titled: My Blue World. The short answer is that it was an intuitive decision/feeling that the three founders put forward. Ha! That question is usually coupled with “why no ears?!” as well. The character is infinitely complex and so writing for the character has always sparked my curiosity, now approaching 21 years in. What started out as “Hey check out this song I wrote for the PVC pipes!” or “wouldn’t it be cool if the Blue Men did this…?!” eventually turned into an invitation to officially write scenarios and compose music for the company. My excitement and passion for the project was always at the forefront of my interactions with the original creators and their inner circle of co-directors. When I auditioned back in 1998 it was still pretty un-known, save for the real theater goers of the respective companies at the time (New York, Boston, Chicago). I was immediately smitten with the whole movement of Blue Man Group. You’ve been there since the early days – how has your role changed creatively? Eventually you’d get placed in New York, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Orlando, Berlin or even a couple of global or national tours. Once you get through casting, there’s training at our headquarters in New York, which can be up to 8 weeks long. We look for any gender performer who fits the 5’10”– 6’1” with an athletic build type, plus, drummer and/or actor. Our 70-odd (no pun intended) Blue Men are from North America, South America, and Europe. We have a casting department that is always looking for actors to play the Blue Man character. How does one become part of Blue Man Group? We sat down with Blue Man (and human) Matthew Banks to chat about what's in that paint, how Blue Men aren't necessarily men at all, and what exactly vomitous-screaming entails.
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