Los Angeles – Phillip Vint wants to be a Blue Man.
That’s why the stocky, 29-year-old drummer for a local funk-reggae band made sure he was at the front of the line last week for open auditions to become the newest member of Blue Man Group.
“The first time I saw the show, I said, ‘I have to do that,”‘ he said. “I’d go anywhere they wanted me to. I’d move to, like, Bakersfield.”
Most striving actors come to an audition with at least a small hope of eventually being recognized on the streets or at a nightclub. But for Vint and the dozens of aspiring actor-drummers lined up outside of Hollywood’s Hudson Theatre, the Blue Man Group offers a chance to beat on lengths of PVC pipe in front of thousands in total anonymity.
“It’s not about being noticed,” Vint said, “it’s about being infamous, which is more my thing.”
The 70 performers employed as Blue Men across America and Europe may be the most recognizable mute, monochromatic figures in theater.
With blue greasepaint covering every inch of exposed skin, the trios of actors drum their way through a mix of surrealist performance art, populist off-Broadway theater and strobe- lighted rock concert, complete with accompanying T-shirts, DVDs and appearances in computer-chip advertisements.
At any given show, audience members are pulled onstage as subjects of cheeky stunts, and there’s a front-row “poncho section,” which may suffer fallout from some of the messier bits involving airborne paint.
For the actors, life as a Blue Man requires a unique set of skills.
The group’s mix of multimedia, music and comedy requires actors to drum on odd objects, convey an array of emotions with only a twitch of an eyebrow or awkward posture, and catch small objects, thrown from across the stage, in their mouths.
Open auditions in cities like Orlando, Fla., and Las Vegas usually draw more than 100 actors and drummers, who rarely can do both convincingly.
“The skill level goes from zero to a hundred,” says casting director Deb Burton.
“A lot of times, it’s like someone going to the art museum and seeing a Picasso and saying, ‘Oh, my 4-year-old can do that.’ They don’t realize the intricacies of what we’re doing, but they find out quickly.”
The audition process begins with a run- through of drum rudiments and ends, hypothetically, with an actor’s being assigned to a regular show in New York; Boston; Chicago; Las Vegas; Orlando; London; Berlin; Amsterdam; Oberhausen, Germany; or one of Blue Man Group’s touring ensembles.
There are a few requirements on height (generally between 5-foot-10 and 6-foot-1) and weight (an athletic build) but not one for gender.
“We had a woman perform in our Boston show,” said Chris Bowen, senior performing director for Blue Man Productions in New York.
“It’s something we’re open to and encourage. But they have to fit the physical description. It’s not like there’s two Blue Men and one Blue Woman onstage.”
