February 2012.

“I had a really great talk with my father,” Brian Tavener recalls about a conversation he had a point in his career when he’d been playing in a band for about five years. Tavener notes that his dad had always been highly supportive of his artistic life but asked, “Why don’t you challenge yourself?”

“He calls it putting lines in the water,”  Tavener continues about this discussion with his dad. “The more lines in the water, the more fish you have the potential to catch. It’s about keeping your options open.”

And it just so happened that shortly after that conversation took place Tavener had tickets to see Blue Man Group.  He loved what he saw, so he “put a line in the water” and sent in an audition tape.  And after a lengthy series of auditions a new Blue Man was born.

If you don’t happen to be one of the seventeen million people who has already seen the three men in blue “skins” perform their hard to describe mix of comedy, music and multi-media theatre, you can catch the current touring show at the Mahalia Jackson theatre in performances through February 5.  And under the blue paint, one of those guys up there on stage is Brian Tavener, who explains that to him this is a lot more than theatre.

“There’s a new concept about cultures coming together,” Tavener says of the thematic underlying this particular show, one that as in all the other Blue Man shows is conveyed without a single word of dialogue. “I think it’s a very important time to talk about cultures coming together and working together.”

“We have an immediate ‘fourth wall break,’” he continues about another innovative aspect of this experience. “The Blue man doesn’t understand the concept of audience vs. stage.

“I think my favorite portion of the show is when there’s a ‘gift exchange,’” wherein he explains, “We make one person in the audience a very special person. You can put yourself in that person’s experience. All without talking. No script no dialogue, just the music. In the end it’s a celebration of that moment.”

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