Is Your Life A Bit Blue?

What would you call a trio of men who wear blue face paint and perform at concerts? ‘The Wonderful Trio of Blue’? ‘The Blue Yonder’? Or even ‘The Blue Experience’? Nope, they are called the ‘Blue Man Group’, and while its a simple unimaginative name it is one that many people around the world has heard of and have grown to accept. A part rock group and part performing arts group, the Blue Man Group are one of the most successful off-Broadway acts.

It all started with three long time friends Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton and Chris Wink.  They have been friends since they were in junior high school, and founded the group in 1987 where they played in various venues in New York, Manhattan, in places such as Central Park, the Performing Garage, Dixon Place and Performance Space 122. Their work became well known and Meryl Vladimer, the Artistic Director of The CLUB saw their work which was a part of the variety show. She was impressed with their work and commissioned Blue Man Group to create a full-length show.  The culminated in Tubes, which took off after Stephen Holden of  New York Times was convinced to review it. After this the popularity of the group continued to rise they performed at the Lincoln centre, won an Obie Award and Lucille Lortel Award.  

This led the producers to take the show off Broadway.  Tubes opened in 1991 at the Astor Place Heater in New York City.  This would be a permanent fixture for the next couple of decades. The show was unique, as almost all of the shows at theatres in New York at that time were either traditional dramas or musicals. Their performances were sold out regularly so more shows had to be added to keep up with the demand: they went from eight shows a week to ten in a short while. For the first three years the group’s original members had performed at every show, playing 1,285 consecutive shows with no understudies, but it was only when the show was expanded to Boston in 1995 that the group hired other Blue Men.

The group ventured into different avenues in 1999 they released their first album, ‘Audio’. It earned a Grammy nomination for pop Instrumental Album and was certified Gold by the Record Industry Association of America in the following year the group had landed a contract with Lava Records.  Their first Album under the deal was Complex which was released in 2003.

This success led to the group opening production in Boston and Chicago. They have also toured all over the world and plan to do more focused on their original work.

In their Early performances the members of the cast would speak to the audiences after the performance still in their make up, answering questions, signing autographs and talk about the show.  But they stopped doing this after a while in order to keep in character. The only autograph they would sign would be a smudge of blue paint and when shown a new piece of technology they would stare at it with a mystified look.

The Blue Man Group perform all over the world and they have another permanent home where they  perform, at Universal Studios as a part of Citywalk. They perform at the sharp Aquos Theatre and each show lasts roughly 1 hour and 45 minutes. It is in an area where you will find loads of Orlando vacation rentals so if you are staying in the area pop by!