Tangled up in Blue

THE curiously entertaining baby, alien, everyman prankster known as Blue Man will soon be out of his teens. That would explain his desire to be a rock star, an ambition that has proved well within his grasp.

Ever since three performance artists fashioned an unlikely off-Broadway hit out of splattering paint, homemade percussion instruments, Hostess Twinkies and a smorgasbord of notions that explore and satirize art and technology, their bald, blue creation has been rather unstoppable. Sixty Blue Men rotate through resident theatrical productions in Las Vegas, Chicago, New York, Boston, Toronto, London and Berlin. The group’s debut album, “Audio,” was nominated for a Grammy Award as best pop instrumental in 2001, its first rock show toured the country in 2003, and a troika of Blue Men continues to star in a series of commercials for Intel. The third Blue Man Group album, a digital-only recording, “Live at the Venetian -- Las Vegas,” has just been released on iTunes.

Blue Man Group’s sound has been influenced by electronic and soundtrack music, Philip Glass, Pink Floyd, Laurie Anderson and Spike Jones, while their performance style nods to vaudeville, Ernie Kovacs’ Nairobi Trio, Jerzy Kosinski’s Chauncey Gardiner and the high moments, or low, depending on one’s perspective, of “Animal House.”

Blue Man doesn’t speak. But one of the group’s founders, Chris Wink, was happy to talk about the indigo trio’s latest adventures and philosophical foundations.

*

Blue Man Group will perform at the Hollywood Bowl’s opening night Friday, its first appearance with a full symphony orchestra. The mind boggles.

We’re taking full advantage of melding the symphony orchestra’s kind of music to our kind of music. It will be important for the audience to suspend their disbelief and accept Blue Man, to understand that this character doesn’t quite know our world or what he’s going to do in it. That’s part of what makes the experience of watching him theatrical. There’s a sense of things unfolding in front of your eyes. What’s the point of just scoring a song and having Blue Men and an orchestra play it? The orchestra and the Blue Man’s culture will try to get together and figure this thing out. The performance is about the theater of that process.

*

Who knew Blue Man wanted to be a rocker?

We’ve always bit the hand that fed us, somewhat. We go into a medium, and then make fun of its pretentiousness. That’s why we’re calling our next tour “How to Be a Megastar 2.0.” We thought it would be really neat to do a rock concert that makes fun of doing a rock concert, then do it for real and make fun of ourselves for doing it for real. The tour begins next September.

*

You wouldn’t find any other band using most of Blue Man Group’s instruments.

We try to make it look like Blue Man found stuff and twisted it around to create instruments. One example is the tube, that’s like a plumbing pipe. The drums look like they were fashioned from large conduit. Lately we’ve been using boat antennas that swish through the air. We have a piano smasher. The piano has no keys and no strings, so it plays one note that’s like a monotone gong. Blue Man just smashes it with a big mallet. A Blue Man instrument is often a lot of trouble for just one note.

*

Why do three Blue Men always perform together?

Early on, we realized there was something about the number three that was kind of magical. It’s the smallest unit of community. Three puts you where isolation and community meet, which is where we want to be. We want to reflect the isolation of the modern world. We all might be hurling into the modern age, but we’re these tribal people. We have the need to congregate.

*

There were some serious philosophical notions behind the birth of Blue Man, such as a belief in submerging the individual ego. Are those ideas still relevant?

Absolutely. We’ve learned a lot from being around this character. Being an innocent is his defining feature, but he’s never been 100% innocent. He isn’t Forrest Gump. He knows a couple of things.

We really do try to emphasize our company as a whole and the collaborative nature of everything we do rather than the individual. We write music that’s a celebration of the tribal. We don’t have crazy drum solos. Popular culture is so much about this manic quest for the individual to be raised up. That’s why our rock tour has its ironic title. What we do is really about the opposite -- the value, the celebration of falling into a joyous collective, in a primal, tribal sense.

*

Before you began recruiting and training Blue Men, you and Blue Man Group’s co-founders, Phil Stanton and Matt Goldman, performed the original New York show 1,285 times. Now you all concentrate on creating and directing new work. Do you still get into blueface once in a while?

I have a 3-year old daughter now, so I do it for her sometimes.

-- Mimi Avins