Sound of Brush

https://www.blueman.com/

Released: 1996

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Man_Group

"...performers, known as Blue Men, have their skin painted blue. They are mute during shows and always appear in groups of three.

As of 2025, the company has shows running in Berlin, Boston, Las Vegas, and Shanghai.

...grew out of a collaboration of three close friends, Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton, on Manhattan's Lower East Side in 1987.^[2] Its first public appearance was a celebration of the end of the 1980s. The three wore blue masks and led a street procession that included the burning of a Rambo doll and a piece of the Berlin Wall.^[3] MTV's Kurt Loder covered the event, drawing attention to the group.^[4] What began as creative "disturbances" on the city's streets became a series of small shows at downtown clubs, and eventually a full performance at the Astor Place Theatre in 1991.^[5]^[6]

In 1993, the group trained their first understudy.^[4] To be in the group, a Blue Man had to "be between five-foot-ten and six-foot-one, skilled at drumming, and able to 'wordlessly emote'... [They] learn to embody six archetypes, which the group calls the 'innocent, hero, scientist, shaman, group member, and trickster.'"^[4] The early Blue Man cast included Gideon Banner, Chris Bowen, Michael Dahlen, Isaac Eddy, Josh Elrod, Mark Frankel, Matt Goldman, John Grady, Randall Jaynes and Pete Simpson.^[7]^[8] Andrea Johnson was the first woman to be a Blue Man. She worked with them from 1999 to 2001.^[4]

In 2010, Goldman sold his share in the group to a venture-capital firm and the group hired Willy Burkhardt who was president of the company from 2010 through 2013. In 2017, Wink and Stanton sold their shares to the Canadian company Cirque du Soleil.^[9]^[10]^[11] On June 29, 2020, Cirque du Soleil filed for bankruptcy in Canada and temporarily laid off staff on June 30.^[12] The next day, on July 1, 2020, they filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy.^[13]^[14]

The New York City run at Astor Place ended on February 2, 2025, after three decades and more than 17,000 performances.^[15]^[16]

Themes

Blue Man performances have a number of themes, including:^[19]

Science and technology, especially the topics of plumbing, fractals, human sight, DNA, and the Internet.
Information overload and information pollution, such as when the audience is asked to choose one of three simultaneous streams of information to read.
Innocence, as when the Blue Men appear to be surprised and perplexed by common artifacts of modern society or by audience reactions.
Self-conscious and naïve imitation of cultural norms, such as attempting to stage an elegant dinner of Twinkies for an audience member; or following the Rock Concert Instruction Manual with the expectation that following instructions is all it takes to put on a rock concert.
Rooftops, or climbing to the top, a metaphor for the directive that Stanton, Wink and Goldman drew from Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers's PBS program The Power of Myth, namely "following your bliss".^[19]