Chicago and New York to get a little less colorful with Blue Man Group departure
Nothing blue can stay.
Image: Blue Man Group/YouTube
Let’s all take a moment to think of Tobias Fünke, whose dream just got that much harder to achieve. The wannabe Blue Man will never again get to blue himself in an audition for the New York or Chicago Blue Man Groups. Both are ending their engagements in their respective cities after nearly 30 years.
Your last chance to see the Blue Men hit paint covered drums and eat marshmallows in complicated ways is coming up fast. The New York Blue Men will play their last show (of over 17,000 performances!) on February 2, while the Chicago Blue Men will bow January 5. But if you know in your heart you’re destined to become a Blue Man like Tobias (or somehow haven’t seen the show in the nearly three decades it’s been on), there’s still a bit of hope. As of this writing, performances are set to continue in Las Vegas, Boston, Berlin, and more. Still, the New York and Chicago announcements were pretty sudden and no official reason was given for the curtain call, so you may want to grab those tickets sooner rather than later.
If you think that the Blue Men are just goofy painted dudes who bang on PVC pipes and never seem to blink, you have no idea the marvel of philosophy, psychology, and high art we’re about to lose. This writer would never purport to abridge the mind of a Blue Man, so here’s the rub directly from Isaac Eddy, who was one for over 12 years:
So it’s this Joseph Campbell psychological analysis of the audience itself. So the Blue Man is reflecting the audience itself and the Blue Man is summoned by the audience itself. A primordial, psychological journey of the audience itself. Put more simply, you could think of it as, the color blue.
There you have it—a sad day for both cities. Now let’s gather together and solemnly sing for our departing heroes: I’m blue, da ba dee da ba di. Da ba dee da ba di, da ba dee da ba di.