Chris Bowen
Senior Performing Director

“In the Blue Man on-stage experience, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When moments happen that could not possibly have been planned, they are the result of the almost inexplicable synergy between performers.”

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This 13th generation Vermonter, Chris was the first of his clan to leave the green pastures for the concrete jungle. He studied theater and music at Bennington College in Vermont and was acting in films and Off and Off-Off Broadway plays when he landed in Manhattan after graduation. Chris formed a rock band with Blue Man musical visionary and original Blue Man drummer, Ian Pai, called the Unbelievable Truth. “He played bass and I played drums,” recalls Chris. “I became the understudy drummer when Blue Man Group at Astor Place opened. I watched from the loft and documented everything for three years. When original Blue Man Phil Stanton hurt his thumb and was advised by his doctor to sit out a couple performances, I took his place.” Some time later, the other two original Blue Men, Chris Wink and Matt Goldman, got their chance to leave the stage, sit in the audience and watch the action. That’s when the idea for Blue Man life beyond the Astor Place Theatre was hatched. The Boston production was next and Chris helped develop the Performer Director role, someone who not only played the character on stage, but also became a teacher as well as trainer for other potential Blue Men. “As the company grew, we started workshops, bringing performers from Las Vegas, Chicago and Boston to New York, where information was shared and then taken back to their host cities.”

Michael Dahlen
Performing Director

“I don’t think in words when I’m doing the character. It’s more of a visceral, guttural sound. Like a pulse that’s handed to you by the music; a rhythm that your body has to take over.”

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Born in Big Springs, Texas and raised in St. Louis, Michael had no interest as a youth in either acting or drumming. “I just wanted to get out of St. Louis so I moved to Boulder and joined the Colorado Shakespeare Festival,” he says with a tempered grin. Gently self-deprecating, Michael admits he pulled an impressive 3.5 GPA at the University of Colorado and went onto secure a Graduate degree in performing arts at NYU. Two weeks before finishing school, he saw an ad and auditioned for Blue Man. “I don’t think I would have been hired under the current casting standards,” he admits, “but it was early on and they were getting ready to go up in Boston and they needed Blue Men.” Michael laughs that Phil Stanton actually ‘fell asleep’ during his audition and when he awoke, couldn’t believe how hapless he was on the kit. “That summer, for seven hours every day, I sat in my non air conditioned apartment, in my underwear, with a practice pad and a metronome and hit those skins until my hands bled. My first performances at the Astor Place Theatre were technically horrible but I was real. And that’s what counted.”

Randall Jaynes
Performing Director

“I played in the elementary school band. My dad taught me drums and my mom taught me baseball, both disciplines reliant on hand eye coordination.”

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From the northern California wine country village of Santa Rosa, Randall was born into a family of drummers. His father, uncle and grandfather banged away in the Navy band. The performance bug was in his blood so he pursued his calling diligently. “I was involved in an intensive physical training program at Santa Rosa High School,” recalls Randall. “That’s where I met my mentor to this day, Elizabeth Craven.” Randall continued his acting studies at Sonoma State University before heading to grad school on the other side of the country at the prestigious American Theater Institute for Advanced Training at Harvard University. “I had two weeks left in grad school when, in May ’95, I saw an ad on our call board at Harvard for Blue Man auditions. I went to New York City with $70 to my name, completely clueless about what the Blue Man Group was, and somehow got in. I was a kid from Santa Rosa with no musical knowledge to speak of who remembered how to hit the drums from childhood. I’m not sure how I got in but nine years later, I am still grateful with all my heart.”

Brian Scott
Performing Director

“The first ingredient to being a really good Blue Man is to be honest; honest about what you are doing rather than trying to put it on and manufacture something that isn’t authentic.”

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Like his performer director counterpart, Chris Bowen, Brian grew up in Vermont.
At the ripe age of eight, he started piano lessons then moved to guitar as a teenager. While attending high school, he and Chris formed a rock band together and gigged around until they graduated. After he finished college at the University of Vermont, Brian moved to Boston while Chris made his way to the Big Apple. “Chris was working as the sub-drummer for Ian Pai and understudy for the original three Blue Men. He wrote me and told me I should audition. He thought I’d be right for the gig. I was blown away and decided to audition when Blue Man Group made the move to open in Boston. I came into the process very raw, not really knowing what I was doing, which turned out to be perfect” says Brian. “Having little theatrical background served me well in the audition. I was nervous but it felt good.” Brian was a Blue Man in Boston for several years before relocating to Chicago to open the show there in 1997. As the Performing Director role in the company developed, he made his way to New York and has been there ever since. He continues to play rock around Manhattan with his latest band, Donkeys – made up of several Blue Man musicians and performers.

Anthony Parrulli
Blue Man
Universal Orlando

“The role is way more acting than drumming, but in a way, the drumming is part of the acting. We’re communicating through our instrument. It’s not drumming for drumming sake; it’s drumming for communication."

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A native of Tampa, Florida, Anthony played snare drum in the City of Dunedin pipe band in high school and toured with the Spirit of Atlanta Drum and Bugle corps. He starred in the Jammitors show at Disney’s Epcot Center for three years. He was cast as one of the six Blue Men that opened the Las Vegas show in March 2001, and then moved to open Universal Orlando in 2007. Anthony worships Van Halen, U2, and the Police and believes he was put on the Earth to be a Blue Man. “I think you have to be a strong, physical drummer for starters. Then, you must be able to portray a character, bring your innermost energy to life, not be afraid to open yourself up and allow your inner being to break free. That energy is whatever you’re most passionate about. It translates to a charisma that is inherent in all Blue Men.”

Eric Gebow
Blue Man
Chicago/Tokyo

“Sometimes, the guys with all the acting talent are actually at a disadvantage because they have to unlearn certain things that have been drilled into their heads by years of schooling. That’s the opposite of where I come from.”

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Born in New Hampshire, Eric spent most of his life in San Francisco where he drummed in local bands like Switchblade Symphony and Tarnation. Attracted by the drumming element, he attended a Bay Area casting call even though he had absolutely no formal actor training. After years in Chicago, he'll soon be opening the Tokyo production. Although Eric was initially intimidated by the theatrical side of the Blue Man equation, he now speaks like a pro, “Blurring the wall between actor and audience is essential to the Blue Man character. Playing music while at the same time telling a story physically was all new to me. But not knowing what to do theatrically truly helped me to create an authentic way of playing the role. I opened the Vegas show, then transferred to Chicago, and it’s been a non stop education where each and every performance, I find out something else about myself and what I’m capable of behind the guise of this extraordinary character.”

Aurelien Bernard
Blue Man
Berlin

“We are all a little blue on the inside. Naïve, childlike, clown, pushed around from hard to soft. Being a Blue Man is like you are a rubber band that is always tight."

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The only French born Blue Man in the company, Aurelien banged his mama’s pots and pans as a child growing up in Nice before gigging the Monte Carlo circuit with his band as a post teen. A girl enticed him to Los Angeles and then Las Vegas where he laid down some groovy jazz beats nightly in the Bellagio Hotel lounge. Attending an open casting call in the decadent desert oasis, he had never acted a day in his life but with a unique European style, landed a spot in the Vegas cast. He then returned to his native Europe to open the London production, and is now in Berlin. Relating his Blue Man Group experiences to his native culture, he reveals, “In French cinema there is a character named Fantomas. He is a hero, thief, pop idol and he is colored blue. Yves Klein is a French artist that uses blue in his paintings. He inspired the part of the show where we take someone from the audience and turn them into a swinging paintbrush. Blue is a spiritual color representing peace and serenity. I identify with the character from where I come from. A personal place. I am onstage acting but I am not an actor. You cannot fake it. ”

Pete Simpson
Blue Man
Astor Place Theater, New York

“Like Anthony (Parrulli), I was in drum corps, which is really intense, sometimes I think even more intense than the Blue Man training (smiles).”

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Born in Eugene, Oregon but raised on the rolling hills of Wyoming, Pete’s mother and father were his theatrical and musical inspiration, always putting on local plays for the community. A graduate of the University of Wyoming at Laramie, Pete went onto further study at the National Theater Conservatory in Denver and spent the summer of ’94 performing at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts. A drive down to New York City that summer with his parents to catch one of the earliest performances of Blue Man at the Astor Place Theatre changed his life. Within a year of that screening, he was cast as a Blue Man in New York, and has gone on to open the Amsterdam production. He imparts the following advice about playing the Blue Man character, “You have to embrace the mystique of the character. That is, here’s a being that does not know exactly what it needs but that it needs it very badly. The enigma of the character is what makes it so interesting. Sometimes the confusion clouds the enigma even more. I have to be the hero; I have to be the clown. I need to reach out to the audience. Ultimately, what the character wants is something that is up to each individual performer. Whatever is given to the audience in an hour and forty minutes is what the character has WANTED to be given. There has to be some ego in this ego-less character. An egoistic drive to want to be seen and heard. They have something they desperately need to say to the world.”