INTERVIEW: Bhurin Sead on the secrets of ‘Blue Man Group’
Photo: Blue Man Group continues off-Broadway at the Astor Place Theatre in New York City. Photo courtesy of Blue Man Group / Provided by press site with permission.
NEW YORK — Blue Man Group has become such an institution in Downton Manhattan that its residency at the Astor Place Theatre feels as permanent as the Empire State Building or PATH train. For decades, this wonderfully bizarre and bizarrely wonderful show has been entrancing and inviting audience members from around the city and beyond. Today, there are Blue Man Group productions in Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas and around the world, and its return to Orlando will be happening quite soon.
The show is a sonic spectacle that marries mime acting and artistic expression with percussive beats for a wholly original evening of theater. At times, the experience feels like a staged play, while other times it feels like a rave party. Still other times it feels like a rock concert, and there’s even a sketch comedy vibe. The connective tissue throughout the evening is percussion, with the Blue Men banging drums and any other object they can find.
There’s not much mythology behind these blue creations, but one can sense that the three main performers are playing blue aliens who have arrived on planet Earth and are utterly fascinated by the communication and technology habits of humankind. This interest in earthlings’ ways is so profound that they head out into the audience to learn even more about the strangeness of this new world.
Bhurin Sead is the captain of Blue Man Group at the Astor Place Theatre on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This unique role means he’s not only a frequent performer in the cast, but he also is the official liaison between the New York company and other troupes around the United States. He manages the six rotating cast members, and he coordinates with other teams, including the on-stage musicians and behind-the-scenes crew.
“It’s a privilege to be a part of it,” Sead said in a recent phone interview. “So the Blue Man captain is a role within the cast. My responsibilities not only include being a performer. I perform with the rest of the cast, but I’m a liaison between our local artistic team, which includes our production stage manager and our resident music director, and the artistic direction team that oversees all the different productions. The other responsibilities that I have in the theater is I coordinate with the production team, help facilitate notes, help direct outside gigs that we do locally. It’s sort of having my hand in a bunch of different little things to make sure that what we’re doing as a cast, as a Blue Man cast, is aligned with the rest of the production team.”
Sead has been on his own Blue Man Group journey for several years, with him practically living at the Astor Place Theatre. The overall journey of Blue Man Group stretches back to the early 1990s. That’s when the off-Broadway mainstay first premiered on Lafayette Street, and in the interim, the show has been seen by some 50 million audience members. Today, the spectacle is owned by Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group. Sead’s role is based in New York City, but he loves learning about the other Blue Men Group productions in sister cities.
“We are really connected with the other productions, especially here domestically with the Chicago show, the Boston show and the Las Vegas show,” he said. “As captains in different cities, we often communicate with one another to check in. Everyone is doing different shows. How are they approaching different problems or different situations? There’s a lot of what we call cross-pollination in terms of ideas. ‘Oh, you’re doing this in Chicago? We should try that in New York,’ and vice versa. It’s not only collaborative locally, but it’s really collaborative across the different cities, which is really great.”
Sead typically performs in five or six shows per week at the Astor Place Theatre. There is a cast of six full-time performers, who constantly rotate in and out from performance to performance. There are also five or six performers who have moved on from Blue Man Group, but they may be called in to help out when actors are on vacation or injured.
“We have another set of performers that are ready to perform,” Sead said, adding that the cast members are well-versed in the art of percussion. “They’re as much a part of the cast as our full-time performers. I feel very lucky. In New York, we have such a relatively big cast.”
Although there appears to be no set characters on stage — they’re all essentially Blue Men — there are some subtle differences. Here is what Sead said about characters #1, #2 and #3: “The way we sort of define the roles is by their stage position, so this is the Left Blue Man or the Center or the Right Blue Man. When you train in, you learn one role, and then after six to eight months, once you sort of understand what the Blue Man is and what you can bring to the character, then you start learning your second role. And then eventually you’ll learn the third role. That’s a huge part for us in terms of keeping it fresh. We’re always switching roles based on the given night. One night I may be playing Left. The next show I may be doing Center, so it helps with that configuration. Even though there’s only six of us, there’s a bunch of different permutations of what you can see on stage, which is very helpful for us to keep things fresh.”
Audience participation is a large part of any Blue Man Group performance. The characters come into the audience area, both the orchestra and mezzanine levels, and sometimes a theatergoer is even invited on stage. This audience element keeps the Blue Men on their toes.
“That’s another very real and exciting component about the show is that the audience is such a huge part of it,” Sead said. “So much of what we do is really dependent on where the audience is at on any given night. They can sort of inform how much we want to push the show, how much we want to let the show sit back, how we play certain musical pieces. We’re really listening to the audience and trying to figure out what do they need in order for this performance to really work for them.”
He added: “For those moments where we invite audience members on stage, for a piece we call ‘Feast, ‘when we bring a person up to have a little shared meal with the Blue Men, that is one of my favorite parts of the show where we really don’t know what this person is going to do. We have a good sense. We’re looking for somebody in the audience that’s kind of excited, but really nervous, that is kind of bubbly, that we have a good connection with. When we bring them up on stage, we really don’t know what they’re going to do, so it keeps us on our toes. A part of our job is to really make them look good, regardless of the choices, regardless of how they act on stage. How can we support this person and this experience? The audience is definitely a real component of the show that we can’t really predict. That’s the fun of it for us, and I think the audience is aware and knows that, too. So, when they see one of their own on stage, I’m sure they all feel invested in it.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Blue Man Group continues at the Astor Place Theatre in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
