Blue Man Group: A New Holiday Surprise

About This Event

Blue Man Group started as three friends messing around, not a company with a stage. Chris Wink and Matt Goldman met in junior high; they met Phil Stanton in college in 1986, and their first-ever public outing as a trio was a mock "Funeral for the '80s" procession through Central Park in 1988 — no script, no venue, just an idea.

Tubes, the show that actually launched the brand, opened at Astor Place Theatre in downtown Manhattan on November 17, 1991, and it's still running there more than three decades later. Everything the franchise is known for — the cobalt paint, the PVC-pipe drumming, the marshmallow-catching, the complete absence of spoken dialogue — was worked out on that one stage before it ever became a worldwide touring brand.

One correction worth making: this is genuinely Blue Man Group's first holiday show, but Chicago isn't quite first in line for it. The company is also making its Broadway debut this same season with the identical show at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, opening around November 17 — about a week before this CIBC Theatre run starts on November 24. Chicago is the first stop of the separate national tour, not the first city to see the show at all.