THE BLUE MAN GROUP

The Blue Man Group was originally just a weird trio of late-'80s New York art-scene street performers who humbly enjoyed thumping out music on PVC pipes. The group has since evolved into a sprawling international creative organization that crafts extravagantly conceptual, visual music shows under the original three guys' guidance.

Michael Quinn entered early into the group's history as an unpaid intern to later become artistic director for the Blue Man collective. Quinn's current roles include stage direction for its touring rock shows and new international theatrical productions. We recently spoke with Quinn by phone as he was finalizing details before the first date of the new How to Be a Megastar, 2.0 Tour, the follow-up to Blue Man's 2003 The Complex arena rock tour.

"We had a lot of stuff in the hopper that we were never able to put in the Complex tour for a variety of reasons, so we've taken that [tour's] concept and pushed it further," he says. "The "Rock Concert Manual' thematic element in that show kind of evolved over that first tour. In the downtime that we've had [since], we realized that what the show was really about was these guys sort of finding this manual and playing around with the conventions of a rock concert. The rock concert is a major ritual that happens in our lives these days, and we wanted to use the tour as an opportunity to take a look at it."

The new tour also further explores one of mass media's biggest current obsessions: the pop idol.

"We put the word "Megastar' in the title, because, for us, it's not just about rock concerts, but the whole genre of pop stardom. It's a really bizarre period right now," Quinn notes.
Using three interchangeably anonymous blue guys to explore the idea of pop celebrity adds a fun twist to the subject. "Yeah, we're trying to make a pop star out of something that has no persona. We're taking something that's lacking in individuality and steeped in anonymity and still somehow making that a pop star. It's just a riot that we can take three bald blue dudes and do the things we do." Quinn cites persona as a central theme across the Blue Man Group's body of work. "It's this Jungian idea of the "shadow self,' and how we have to build masks in order to survive in the world. Blue Man work is, in many ways, mask work, but S¹ taking off a mask. The Blue Man is a human stripped of all of their persona and ego, and all the little trappings of the little things we need to survive and not be too vulnerable in the modern world."

He continues, "[But] I don't want to get too heady about it. We're not philosophers or social critics, per se. We're just out to have a good time and poke some fun at the things that we think are absurd, including ourselves. Like, let's look at the rock concert, and how bizarre it is that you can go almost anywhere in the world and there are certain moves that everyone will know. It just happened independently, all over the place. So we're sort of taking the wind out of it a little bit, but we're [also] celebrating it because we love it. It's an awesome experience to stand in a crowd of 10,000 people, pumping your fist in the air because you're so into the music."

Another big, recurring Blue Man conceptual theme is technology. "We love technology and love gadgets, but at the same time, we're asking, is this technology really bringing us together or is it keeping us a little alone?" Quinn says. One of the Megastar 2.0 tour's hip, new high-tech ingredients is a Mobcast cell-phone technology.

"It's a text-messaging element of the show that you can sign up for," Quinn explains. "We're going to send you messages throughout the night and get you more information about what we're thinking. And hopefully, we'll do it in a fun and not annoying way because God knows getting messages during a concert could be totally annoying!"

(Originally published inThe Cleveland Free Times, March 7th, 2007)