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Thanks, Debbie, for the fascinating
report. We have a set of PVC pipes in our basement, saved from when my
percussionist husband performed a Blue Man type piece at church. If they ever
come to From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lance Muir ----- Original Message ----- From: Debbie Sawczak To: 'Lance Muir'
Sent: March 11, 2006
22:20 Subject: Blue Man Group Like I said, it was amazing. (I told you I was prepared to
dislike it, but behind the advance guard I put up sometimes, my mind is usually
open. Sancho Panza comes back and says “It’s only a windmill, Quixote, lighten
up,” and I put away the sword.) The show was an endless, rapid stream of
acts. A few were silly and gross—for the first 15 minutes I thought, man, this
is lame, I am going to be bored to tears, does anyone actually think this
is funny? But most of them were clever and original, and some were truly
funny. Some were social commentary, and a few were downright beautiful. It
was a huge sensory feast, at least for eyes and ears. The best part for me was the sound, the musical segments
that were interspersed among the other acts. The Blue Men are all three rock
drummers, and absolutely breathtakingly skilled. The rhythms were complicated,
all three of them doing different ones that worked together, so that it was
almost as much a treat to watch their hands as to listen to the sound. They
were backed by a band, high up above in boxes of dark glass so you could just
barely see the guys inside, but while the music was rocky, it was not a typical
rock band; when I think back, I don’t recall that I heard any electric guitar,
for example. The sound was almost exclusively percussive, but pitched, so that
the strokes made different tones, melodies and harmonies. All of the pieces
were fast and complex, but some were feverish while others were more peaceful.
And they drummed on anything and everything. At one point one of the men stood
with two great lengths of plastic pipe, about six inches in diameter, while his
companion drummed on the outside of them. The guy holding them pushed one piece
in and out of the other to varying degrees so as to give the drumming different
pitches. Then the third guy came with another set of pipes and joined them all
up, so both guys were pushing and pulling. It was the most interesting sound,
electrically amplified. In another piece, one of the many layers of rhythm was
a Blue Man pounding at the rate of about one beat per second with a huge hummer
on an enormous gong-sized drum, hung vertically. Again, as interesting visually
as it was auditorially, watching the cycle his body went through in lifting and
swinging this hammer. You could feel the vibrations in your chest. In another
piece, they were crunching cereal in different rhythms, and the crunches were
amplified. (Well, it probably wasn’t the amplification of their actual live
crunching, but a similar noise, synchronized with their munching—and that was
the other amazing thing, the perfect synchronization, the perfect timing, of
everything; the band members up above provided unusual but appropriate
electronic sound effects for the actions on stage, detailed and perfectly
timed.) A lot was done with paint, too: near the beginning, all
three Blue Men were drumming fantastically on tall drums, and every now and
then one would quickly stop and squirt paint onto the heads of the others’
drums so that as they drummed, a shower of coloured droplets would be
constantly splashing upward. Interesting use of filming, as well; a cameraman
moved around the stage filming many of the sequences, and the action was
projected simultaneously on screens on the stage so that you had the real guys
as well as their image from a different angle. For one segment the cameraman
followed them backstage and outside into the street, while we watched on the
screens. (A taxi was flagged down by the gestures of one Blue Man, and the others
got in and left while he wasn’t looking. They returned seconds later. Once
again, I’m not sure if all of that was actually live or partly prefilmed.)
Also, they did no talking. There were some multimedia segments with recorded
voice-overs, but no live talking, and even when they brought a person up from
the audience to participate improv-style in one segment, she made no noise
whatsoever, even kept herself from laughing out loud although positively
shaking with laughter. Their faces were totally deadpan, but their eyes wide
and their gazes penetrating, making plenty of eye contact with the audience.
Every now and then they came down and went through the audience; we were in the
front row and I was on an aisle, so one of them came by me every time they came
down and would gaze, but soulfully rather than threateningly, at me. Being in
the front row, we were given plastic ponchos, but nothing landed us because we
were a bit off to the side. I did get a little red paint splashed on my feet
and ankles. It wasn’t all drumming, of course, but I don’t want to even
try to describe all the acts. I was just blown away by the sheer number of
original ideas one after the other without pause, almost too many to enjoy
properly, but not in a way that was frustrating. It was as if they had spent
their entire imaginations on us. In one of the very last sequences, while the Blue Men were
playing a very evocative, peaceful, melodic, rhythmic number, scores of long,
flexible, translucent ribbed tubes about six inches in diameter (like very big
vacuum cleaner hoses) suddenly and silently fell from the high ceiling in
pairs. The two hoses in each pair were suspended from the ends of a short
horizontal bar, and this bar rotated so that the hoses coiled around each other
above our heads. Coloured lights were shining down the tubes so that they were
glowing in different hues. It was such a lovely surprise! At that moment I felt
pure gratitude. The words that formed in my mind were, “Thank you for having
all these wonderful ideas!” They were in the lobby afterwards, and people were
having themselves photographed with them. If they had not been so busy, I'd
have said my thank you to them aloud. My sister-in-law Chris had said the theatre was at Yonge and
I wish I had saved a program. I carried one halfway back
down to the car, then got tired of carrying it and threw it in the garbage. I
didn't even read the background on the guys. The next moment I thought how
typical this was of the difference between you and me. Of course, I guess I
could read it on the Internet if I wanted... D -- |
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