The Blue Man Group is truly one of the most remarkable entertainment stories in a long time. The men draped in blue paint perform their brand of performance art / musical theater in cities around the world (New York, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Orlando, Berlin, Oberhausen - Tokyo will open in December) and present special shows that tour the planet as well. Their latest show, "How To Be A Megastar Tour 2.1" will roll into the Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton, NJ on November 9, 2007. I recently spoke with Jeff Turlick, a long-time member, about the organization, the current show, and the phenomenon that is Blue Man Group.
How long have you been a part of Blue Man Group?
I've worked with them for eight years.
That was right around the time the group really took off with the Intel commercials and stuff. How did you get involved with them?
I was living in Boston at the time and a good friend of mine who I had played music with was promoted to music director for Blue Man Group and he recruited me. It's funny because I had been in Boston for a number of years and never had seen the show. Mostly because I was a rock musician and I felt like musical theater wasn't my thing. He called me up and tried to get me to come see the show at one point when he was playing drums. He's like you've got to come down and see the show, it's really fun. I had heard it was performance art and that it got messy and I thought if I go to this thing I'm going to end up on stage with a pie in my face. Forget it!
Later on he called me up and said we're looking for somebody, why don't you come down and check it out. We'll show you the instruments and just audition, we really need you. So I did and I've gotta say when I first saw the show I was blown away. I fell in love with it and had to be part of it. I just thought it was such an interesting concept. It wasn't like a normal theater show. It's not musical theater, it's just so unique and different. Even eight years later, I'm still really excited about it!
Ah, so it's like multi-level marketing for musicians!
Absolutely! We do hire actors to play the Blue Man roles, but we more often hire musicians that we run through an audition to see if they can communicate without speaking, just with their body language and their eyes. Music is sort of the underlying foundation since it's a great way to communicate without speaking.
Could you have ever imagined when you started that Blue Man would become such a world-wide thing?
Definitely not. I think I saw the potential, at least for the show itself, because since the character doesn't speak it's really easy for him to cross cultures. We've performed in China, South America, all over Europe and will be opening a show in Toyko this December. Any culture can get it because everybody can relate to The Blue Man. He has these human traits and I think we've all felt like an outsider at times and come to a situation where you don't know anybody and they don't know you and the question is how do you deal with it. We've all been there and that's essentially where The Blue Man is coming from.
I saw the potential, but I never dreamed it would get this big. I love the directions we're going. About two years ago, we opened a learning center in New York and now we've got what we call The Blue School. It's essentially a private school for early education. We also have a touring children's museum exhibit, which isn't so much a promotion for our show but a way to teach kids about sound and music. The goal of this company is bigger than just being about entertainment, we really want to touch and inspire people.
It seems like part of the success of the show is that it is so different from what people expect it to be.
Yeah, that's the fun thing because it's not so much a show with a plot but a commentary on pop culture and modern society. There are elements of science and technology, a definite focus on the world of art and what is art, and, at the same time, it's very Vaudevillian. The Blue Man have this sort of slapstick relationship with each other because they don't come from our culture, so they're trying to make sense of our culture. They discover things about the culture and usually do things you wouldn't expect and that's what makes the show really fun to see. It's so unpredictable! You never know what's going to happen next. And the show is slightly different every time because there's an element of crowd participation and the crowds aren't predictable for us on stage. You never know how people are going to react to certain things and the performers react to that both musically and physically.
The "How To Be A Megastar" show has a loose plot involved. They receive a manual on how to be a rock star, right?
Exactly. The Blue Men appear on stage with this big, kick ass rock band and they perform for a little bit but they don't really know what to do next until they get a hold of this video tutorial which leads them through different discoveries and gets the audience involved. All of this stuff is brand new to them, so they have to figure out how to make it work while still pulling the audience in and helping keep them inspired as well.
I love the concept of the show. When you guys are on the stage you are like rock stars, but because of the blue makeup nobody really knows who you are. It's like being a super hero.
That's exactly right. We kind of avoid the cult of personality because of the makeup. We sort of poke fun at it while we embrace it at the same time. It kind of shows you that anybody can be a Blue Man, we all have it inside us.
I know, for me personally, I think it's great. Because we're a collective you don't really experience some of the negative sides of being in a rock and roll band, which is where I came from. There's a lot of ego usually in a band and some people have bigger egos than others. With this, we're all just in it for the same reason. We're just in it to have a good time and hopefully spread the good time.
Ok, let's say you're at a party and someone asks you what you do and you say you're a Blue Man. What kind of responses do you get? Do they believe you? I mean, you've done shows around the world but how can you prove it?
(laughs) It's a good point! Well, even though we are really well known there is still a huge number of people that have never heard of it. So, that's half of the responses. Or people may have heard of it, but don't really know what it is. "That's the performance art thing, right?" But then there are others that completely know what it is and are just tickled to meet somebody that works for it.
What would you say is the best thing and the worst thing about being a Blue Man?
The best thing for me personally is just to be part of an organization like this that is really focused on doing good and not just on making money. It really means a lot. The worse thing... I don't know if I have a good answer for that.
I guess you've done it long enough that if the makeup really wasn't non-toxic you'd know about it by now...
Absolutely!
