Blue Man Group gets complex
Tonight, the Blue Man Group will appear at the Kohl Center to an audience that will be unexpectedly shocked — in a good way. Well, many good ways.
The Blue Man Group is composed of three humanlike men with their heads and hands painted blue and dressed in simple black clothes. One of the group’s main missions: to entertain all types of audiences with their onstage antics.
The group is appearing in Madison as part of its Complex Rock Tour, which is separate from the acts in Chicago, New York or Boston. The acts in these cities are more of a theatrical experience, while this particular tour plays upon the music from the group’s CD release, The Complex, which features collaborations with such notables as Rob Swift (turntablist), Dave Matthews, and Venus Hum (an underground electronic music group from the States).
At past tour performances, unexpected visits by fellow collaborators have occurred, and I am led to believe that it will be no different for the show tonight. Such collaborations are not unusual for the group, as the observed and unsaid Blue Man Group philosophy is one that collaborates pantomime acting with a live band playing rock music at the same time or between “scenes.”
The rock band in the Blue Man act is not your typical band. In fact, the touring version of the Blue Man Group practices a form of anti-rock in that what they perform is not a rock concert but is, after all, a celebration of complexities.
What in the world do I mean? The band that accompanies the group is mostly acoustic, and intertwined with seemingly random sound bytes in order to communicate a message. After all, Blue Man Group performer Matt Goldman admitted in a recent interview, “We are trying to shake up the rock world.”
This avant-garde audio is accompanied by experimental visuals of differing words and symbols that may appear random in nature but are a contemporary delight when combined with the music and the acts of the Blue Men on stage.
The Complex tour was not only named after the CD release but was termed complex in that the idea of the group is for these Blue Men to explore what they perceive to be a complex world. They seem to uncover every possible sound that can be created with PVC tubing, and each will quickly shoot a facial expression of dismay should one of the others commit a fop in the new world they have entered.
The complexities of PVC tubing are the tip of the iceberg in terms of the complexities discovered. The Blue Men are constantly looking around to try to make sense of other objects and things around them that are complex.
The Blue Men have, in the past, performed a skit in which they tried to come to terms with drums with paint inside of them. They utilized drumsticks to beat their individual drums, only to learn that each drum had a different color of paint on its skin. They presented the discovery of their differences as unexpected and then learned to live their color differences, becoming interested in getting the color of their paint as high into the air as possible.
This example illustrates an important point to be made about the Blue Man Group: their show has real world generalizability with regard to many social issues (including race relations, explored in this example). This is not a complex world and the simple Blue Men prove that, for themselves, exploring this newfound world called Earth is an experience that teases out their own individual complexities. This is not a show to be missed.
If you would like to see this contemporary experience for yourself before the Madison show, check out the Blue Man Group website (www.blueman.com), click on “The Complex,” then click the “Video” button. The “Your Attention” movie will offer a example representative of what an attendee can expect from tonight’s showing.
The Blue Man Group performs at the Kohl Center tonight, Wed. Oct. 22, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $21.50 to $44, and are still available at Ticketmaster outlets.
