Blue Man Group Limited Edition Las Vegas Cd Art
How Blue Turned to Greenish: Blue Man Group at 25 Years
They are bald, blue and earless. They do not talk. They play with their nutrient (and their paint), perform wild music on instruments of their ain devising and are the centerpiece of an international entertainment empire with 550 full- and function-time employees and annual revenues of $100 1000000.
But perhaps the most striking thing about the men of Blue Human being Group, which began equally a nebulous let'southward-do-something-weird response to the banality of downtown civilisation in the belatedly 1980s, is how comprehensively they have moved from the fringes to the mainstream, and beyond.
In November, the group celebrated its 25th anniversary in a manner befitting an institution whose brand reverberates far beyond the urban center limits but that also shouts "Manhattan" as thoroughly every bit the Rockettes or the Circle Line.
Cities with permanent Blue Man productions — Las Vegas; Orlando, Fla.; Boston; Chicago; and New York — declared November. 17 "Blueish Man Group Day." Madame Tussauds in Times Square unveiled limited-edition wax figures. In that location was a party at the Highline Ballroom. And the Blueish Men got to flip a switch and plough the Empire State Building blue for a night.
Their popularity is undisputed; two meg people worldwide visit their shows every twelvemonth. But in New York, full of theatergoers who scurry to the other side of the street when tourist buses curlicue upward, wide appeal is inappreciably a recommendation. It'southward easy to write off Blue Homo Group every bit the local equivalent of "The Mousetrap," a piece of former furniture that is always at that place simply has petty new to offer.
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Merely that may be the wrong way to expect at it. The show is and then winsome, so witty, so energetic that it might ensnare you lot despite yourself, leaving you as tangled up in bluish every bit the about undemanding out-of-towner. "The appealing peculiarity of these wordless, smooth-skulled creatures remains," Laura Collins-Hughes wrote last year in The New York Times, checking back on the show 24 years after the newspaper gave it its first (glowing) review.
Snootiness doesn't bother the original Blueish Men, who argue that they never saw themselves as advanced, anyway. They couldn't be, they say, rooted as they are in the populist traditions of vaudeville.
"We look at information technology similar we tapped into something deep and universal and profound," Chris Wink, one of the original Blue Men, said.
Give in to the Blue Men, and you give in to their silliness, seen to its best advantage during the showstopping Twinkies-based banquet scene that relies on the kindness of a participating audience member. Other unlikely props include splatter-decumbent paint, Cap'n Crunch cereal and a serial of tubes.
The evidence has been refined and overhauled with new cloth over the years merely still features gentle digs at pretentiousness and engineering saturation, and a lot of adept drumming. As always, it ends with an exuberant finale that leaves anybody in the theater covered in glorified toilet paper.
Anyone can T.P. a room. What sets the grouping apart is the Blue Man character himself: an exotic Everyman — outsider to both the punk rocker and the business executive — that Mr. Wink and his collaborators, Matthew Goldman and Phil Stanton, brought to life in the late 1980s. (They are all at present in their 50s.)
Paradigm
Mr. Flash, a musician, and Mr. Stanton, so an aspiring role player, met catering an event at the Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Chris was putting garbage liners in the big garbage cans, and they asked me to assistance," Mr. Stanton said. Mr. Goldman, a software producer, knew Mr. Wink from their junior high days at the Fieldston School in New York.
They have told the story oft, only information technology essentially goes similar this. Unhappy about the cultural scene in Lower Manhattan — so exciting in the '60s and '70s, then dreary in the '80s — they began holding weekly get-togethers at the apartment Mr. Flash and Mr. Goldman shared on the Upper West Side.
"Basically everyone was charged with bringing something interesting to share — a book, a movie, a tape, an article," said Larry Heinemann, an erstwhile friend of Mr. Flash's who was a musical coordinator for the group in the early years. "It was like a book club, simply information technology wasn't limited to books."
Operation fine art was in the air: "We got this idea that we should get bluish and walk around," Mr. Wink said.
Their determinative event, the famous-in-retrospect "Funeral for the '80s" in Central Park, was not especially well idea out. "It wasn't like we were actually hostage about this," said Mr. Wink, the group'due south large talker despite his years as a silent Blueish Man. "It was more like, 'Permit's put it out of its misery and make way for something new.'"
Merely he was savvy enough to send a news release to MTV. The 5.J. Kurt Loder and a cameraman came along to witness a bunch of blueish people conveying a coffin, making portentous pronouncements and setting fake burn down to '80s symbols they institute objectionable, including Rambo. The audience: perhaps two dozen.
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MTV hyped the story, Mr. Goldman said, "and through the magic of editing, made it expect like you lot'd missed the Sexual practice Pistols" if you lot missed the event.
The '80s were notwithstanding non over — this was 1988 — and the Blue Men began refining the Blueish Man. He would exist at once fundamental and futuristic — and mute, on the grounds that silence would increase his mystery and his ability.
They started putting on short sets with homemade props at alternative spaces downtown, got their first reviews when they played at La MaMa, performed (and got a standing ovation at) the Serious Fun Festival at Lincoln Center, and in 1991 moved to their permanent home, the Astor Identify Theater on Lafayette Street.
For iii years, the original trio were the but Blueish Men, performing half dozen days a week without respite. Just wanting to expand to other cities, they began training other men (and a few women) for the job. There take been a total of 125 then far.
There have likewise been albums; television commercials; a rock concert parody tour; multiyear runs in Europe and Asia; appearances on "The Simpsons" and late-night talk shows; a book; a world tour that began last spring and features some old and some new cloth; and, on "Arrested Development," a very funny multiseason running gag nigh Tobias Bluth'south Blue Homo obsession, starting from the time he attends a evidence under the mistaken conventionalities that information technology's a depressed men'due south support group.
In 2010, Mr. Goldman sold his i-tertiary share to GF Capital, a private equity fund. (Bluish Homo Group is a private company and won't disclose the figure.) He is now focused on the Bluish School, an independent pre-Thou through eighth-grade private school on Water Street that the Blue Men helped found and that emphasizes creativity, originality and a sense of wonder.
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The group's New York existent estate holdings include the building that houses its theater, a rehearsal space and video editing suite, and a recording studio and musical instrument creation lab.
Forty pct of revenues are spent on salaries and benefits, said Leslie Kelley, managing director of Blueish Man Group. Simply with financial success has come up some friction.
Last summer, Ian Pai, who helped compose much of the show's early music and worked as the musical director in several cities, sued in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, contending that he had been cheated of his fair share of royalties for decades. Though a judge threw out part of his merits, the example is pending.
In a argument, Blue Human being Group chosen Mr. Pai'due south suit "groundless," saying that he has been earning betwixt $100,000 and $200,000 a yr. "We look forward to refuting the details of his claims," it added.
All the Blue Men are trained in a facility downtown, and the place was bustling during ceremony week. In ane room, a trio of electric current Bluish Men explained why information technology was non deadening to continually play a character who is always blue, always silent and always surrounded by two others of his ilk.
David McLaughlin, 28, from Northern Ireland, said the role was counterintuitively liberating. "When y'all have the inability to speak, you have to exist honest and exist yourself," he said. "There's nada to hibernate behind."
Down the hall, 30 superfans who had come from as far afield as Turkey and Germany were finishing tiffin. Similar members of any fan group who stay in bear on generally online, they are a little obsessive.
"Yous can relate to them regardless of your background or where you come from or who you lot are," said Joe Striedl, 41, a program manager for a Baltimore aerospace company, who reckons he'due south been to 20 to thirty shows in thirteen years. "In then many ways, our culture feeds off what you meet, and we need to movement across that. They've taken away the external qualities yet constitute a way to express their personalities."
Davitta Simon, 42 and living in Spartanburg, S.C, became entranced past the wild tribal music and the anarchic spirit in the Blue Man videos she stumbled on while in the Navy in Iraq in the 2000s.
The alive shows have inspired her to draw and to develop a comic book character. "I've never experienced a camaraderie, other than in the armed services, quite like this," she said of the Blueish Human customs.
The three founders don't perform much whatsoever more — you lot can't be blueish forever — merely amongst the festivities they expressed anaesthesia at how far they had come from the days when, as Mr. Flash said, "we were only guys who put on baldheaded caps and paint and went to Cardinal Park."
"I'd like to call back," he added, "that we've left a small, yet palpable, blue thumbprint on New York."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/theater/how-blue-turned-to-green-blue-man-group-at-25-years.html
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