act. After rehearsal the first day, I sat at the back of the hall as Bette herself came in to start her own rehearsal. At some point, she asked her band (all strangers to her repertoire) to play a song from her third album, Songs for the New Depression . The band members were stymied. One of the Harlettes whispered something in Bette’s ear and pointed to me in the audience. Bette yelled out, “Hey, can you play ‘No Jestering’?”
And I actually got to walk up to the stage saying, “Oh, Miss Midler, I know every note of every arrangement of every song on every album of yours. Please let me play for you.”
So what’s my point? To be a success, cut school and play the piano in an empty piano bar in order to meet your future lover and, subsequently, your idol? Well, that might be hard to re-create, but I will tell you this: Do not ever be afraid to dream, to imagine yourself doing exactly what you want to do in life, because it happened to me!
Matt Goldman
Co-Founder of the Blue Man Group and the Blue School
I Don’t Want to Be Reasonable
In the late eighties, Phil Stanton, Chris Wink, and I dreamed up a crazy idea for a show called the Blue Man Group. We took to the stage in New York in 1987, appearing as a trio with cobalt-blue skin and plain black clothes who had no ears, no hair, and did not speak. From the start, Blue Man was often misunderstood. All he wants to do is connect. He wants to connect with his fellow Blue Men onstage, with his audience, with everyone and everything around him. When an audience member comes into the theater and sees this strange being—bald and blue—for the first time, the natural reaction is to think he’s someone strange or alien. But a third of the way through the performance the audience realizes, “I’m actually watching myself, someone very human.” Blue is not a mask that we put on. It’s about what has been taken off. Once you take away hairstyle, skin tone, ethnicity, gender, and fashion—all the things that get us through our daily lives—what you’re left with is the thing that is essentially human in all of us. I think that is why Blue Man has endured over the years; it allows us to look at ourselves with fresh eyes.
The first time Chris, Phil, and I went bald and blue, and looked in the mirror and at one another, if at that very moment I had said out loud, “We’re going to make a living at this,” someone would have carted me off to a padded cell. If, the first time we went bald and blue, I’d thought, I’m going to make a living at this and play ten thousand shows in New York City, and an additional twenty-five thousand shows on five continents (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and New Jersey); if I’d said we would collaborate with artists like Moby, Dave Matthews, and the Kodo drummers; if I’d said to myself, Yeah, we’re going to sell out Lincoln Center and perform at a football stadium in front of eighty-five thousand people; if we’d imagined we were going to be nominated for a Grammy Award and perform live at the Grammys, to a standing ovation at the Staples Center; if I’d told you that all three of us would meet our wives at the show; that we’d get audience members to donate a few bucks at a time, adding up to three million dollars, to help families with AIDS; if I’d told you that we would go to the nation’s capital and lobby senators and congressmen to fund music and arts education in the public school system; if I’d predicted that we would start an elementary school and sit on a panel discussing creativity with two Nobel Prize laureates, a British knight, a psychologist, and the Dalai Lama himself—if we had said all that the first time we went bald and blue, they’d have thrown us into that padded cell and tossed away the key. But that is what happened. That’s what happened even though a lot of people—smart people, good-willed people, even loved ones and relatives—said that we were crazy. “It’s not
And I actually got to walk up to the stage saying, “Oh, Miss Midler, I know every note of every arrangement of every song on every album of yours. Please let me play for you.”
So what’s my point? To be a success, cut school and play the piano in an empty piano bar in order to meet your future lover and, subsequently, your idol? Well, that might be hard to re-create, but I will tell you this: Do not ever be afraid to dream, to imagine yourself doing exactly what you want to do in life, because it happened to me!
Matt Goldman
Co-Founder of the Blue Man Group and the Blue School
I Don’t Want to Be Reasonable
In the late eighties, Phil Stanton, Chris Wink, and I dreamed up a crazy idea for a show called the Blue Man Group. We took to the stage in New York in 1987, appearing as a trio with cobalt-blue skin and plain black clothes who had no ears, no hair, and did not speak. From the start, Blue Man was often misunderstood. All he wants to do is connect. He wants to connect with his fellow Blue Men onstage, with his audience, with everyone and everything around him. When an audience member comes into the theater and sees this strange being—bald and blue—for the first time, the natural reaction is to think he’s someone strange or alien. But a third of the way through the performance the audience realizes, “I’m actually watching myself, someone very human.” Blue is not a mask that we put on. It’s about what has been taken off. Once you take away hairstyle, skin tone, ethnicity, gender, and fashion—all the things that get us through our daily lives—what you’re left with is the thing that is essentially human in all of us. I think that is why Blue Man has endured over the years; it allows us to look at ourselves with fresh eyes.
The first time Chris, Phil, and I went bald and blue, and looked in the mirror and at one another, if at that very moment I had said out loud, “We’re going to make a living at this,” someone would have carted me off to a padded cell. If, the first time we went bald and blue, I’d thought, I’m going to make a living at this and play ten thousand shows in New York City, and an additional twenty-five thousand shows on five continents (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and New Jersey); if I’d said we would collaborate with artists like Moby, Dave Matthews, and the Kodo drummers; if I’d said to myself, Yeah, we’re going to sell out Lincoln Center and perform at a football stadium in front of eighty-five thousand people; if we’d imagined we were going to be nominated for a Grammy Award and perform live at the Grammys, to a standing ovation at the Staples Center; if I’d told you that all three of us would meet our wives at the show; that we’d get audience members to donate a few bucks at a time, adding up to three million dollars, to help families with AIDS; if I’d told you that we would go to the nation’s capital and lobby senators and congressmen to fund music and arts education in the public school system; if I’d predicted that we would start an elementary school and sit on a panel discussing creativity with two Nobel Prize laureates, a British knight, a psychologist, and the Dalai Lama himself—if we had said all that the first time we went bald and blue, they’d have thrown us into that padded cell and tossed away the key. But that is what happened. That’s what happened even though a lot of people—smart people, good-willed people, even loved ones and relatives—said that we were crazy. “It’s not
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