Phil Stanton, one of the three co-founders of the Blue Man group 25 years ago, and still active in constantly re-imagining and re-composing the show to keep it current, was interviewed on CBC radio today.
What is now the around-the-world-acclaimed and long-running Blue Man theatrical show began as a one-off public funeral for the 1980's staged in Central Park by Phil, Chris Wink and Matt Goldman as a way of putting that decade to rest. The three together saw the 1980's as a very lamentable decade, and staged the funeral as a way of affirming its end, leaving it behind them, and opening a way to be born for and into something new. The fact that they dressed as blue men was a result of a dream that one of the three had, of a blue man.
And it worked. Something about the performance clicked for them, and for whoever saw and heard of it. And Blue Man was born (or, perhaps, raised anew?)
The three men remain the creative genius behind the on-going iterations of the Blue Man, constantly re-imagining and re-creating the show to keep it current with the cultural life of the day and in whatever part of the world the show is being performed. They see Blue Man as "the outsider within" -- an icon of the inner, tribal human spirit, in touch with our deepest, universal identity, always in creative and critical conversation with the culture of the current day -- culture that sometimes expresses, but in so many ways is at odds with, or alienated from our deepest human identity.
They also see Blue Man as a singular character -- a composite of the three persons who are Blue Man on stage, each of the three expressing some side or aspect of the fullness of the core, essential human character. It's also interesting that at one point in the show's history, the three included something strikingly new in the Blue Man show, and after they staged it the response from friends was an intuited but clear judgement that "Blue Man would never do that." It was removed from the show. It was clearly a false note and a mis-step in the on-going incarnation of Blue Man.
There really is something about Blue Man that resonates with something deep within us, no matter where we are in the world and what culture we live in. Somehow, when we see Blue Man, we recognize him as us on some deep, inner level -- a level that we ourselves are often alienated from until we see him. And the resonance is so deep and clear, that we also recognize when it really is Blue Man, and when it is not -- when it is really our deepest spirit, and when not.
I wonder if that's how people knew Jesus was Jesus -- that it had nothing to do with miracles, proofs, theological arguments and all that kind of thing, and everything to do with what people recognized within themselves when they saw him in relation to the culture of their day. Somehow it clicked. They knew. They knew who he was. Because in seeing him, they knew who they really were.
And is that maybe how we are saved? How you and I and all of humanity at any time and in any culture are saved? Or at least one image of what salvation is?
That we intuitively recognize particular aspects and sides of truly Human being, in different persons of our time and in their creative, critical conversation with our culture, and that in recognizing it out there -- on the public stage of our era, we come to know our own deepest and truest self from which we have been too easily alienated.
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