Blüe

That meant an eight-week training process, halfway through which Sead began appearing in shows in New York. Learning to play the instruments and get the Blue Mannerisms down is only part of the process – the key part, Sead says, was learning to gauge audience reactions and adapt accordingly.

“The show relies a lot on audience participation … so there’s only so much you can do in the studios,” he says.

Now he travels the country with three other Blue Men – each show features three of the four Blue Men in action, with the fourth getting a night off – bringing the group’s unique repertoire to audiences across the country.

Sead has been a Blue Man for four years now and thrives on the ever-changing nature of the show. The three original Blue Men – Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton, who founded the group in the 1980s – are still very involved in the creative process, which helps the show maintain its foundation even as it forever incorporates new pieces.

“We have a group of creative directors and writers in New York City who are constantly coming up with new ideas and new instruments to play,” Sead says.

As important as the Blue Men themselves are, they must keep their actions in time with the music, and keeping that timing going is the responsibility of the show’s four musicians – a drummer, a percussionist, a zither player and a Chapman stick player. A Chapman stick is essentially a long guitar neck with no body. While the Blue Men appear in their signature skin color and black clothing, the musicians are garbed in blacklight-friendly glow-inthe-dark costumes.

Julian Cassanetti is the show’s music director and also plays the stringed instruments, rotating his instrument of choice with the show’s other strings player. The Boston native has been with Blue Man Group since the early 2000s, getting his start as an usher and hitting a stroke of luck when a musician job opened up a few weeks after he had expressed an interest in performing.

“Everybody seemed to be part of a family, if you would,” Cassanetti says. “The dynamic there was not so much casual as it was a family – everybody was listening to everybody.”

Though the theatrical show and the music are tightly scripted, the transition from one bit to the next is where the Blue Men get a chance to flex their creative muscles – the performers take their cues from the audience and decide how to proceed. reacting to the audience is an important job for the musicians as well – they need to be in sync with the Blue Men and able to communicate transitions and ad- aptations back and forth without speaking onstage. The Blue Men set the pace, but because they are mute, the music is crucial to telling the story.

“If the audience is really rowdy one night, it might be a cue for us to really turn up the gas,” says Sead.

“What makes you react to things is not necessarily what they’re doing, but what they’re thinking,” Cassanetti says.

Cassanetti and his fellow musicians keep their eyes and ears well trained so they can pay attention to the Blue Men, their instruments, their monitors and the audience without losing their focus.

One of the things for which the Blue Man Group is best known is playing ridiculous instruments you won’t see anywhere else, and though Sead is hard pressed to pick a favorite, among the best for him is the drumbone, a colossal contraption made from moveable PVC piping and played with oversized drumsticks.

“It really takes three guys to play it – two people to hold it and one person to drum it,” says Sead.

The instrument is a microcosm for the show as a whole, Sead says – three guys just trying to figure it all out. cs

With Dr. Phil Heit