“The day I got hired as a Blue Man,” says Chicago actor Michael Cates, “they told me two things: put on some weight, and get those eyebrows under control.”
Hacking his eyebrows back to a manageable hedge was a simple transformation compared to the other one he had to go through to be “birthed” as a Blue Man–the term company founders Chris Wink, Matt Goldman, and Phil Stanton use to describe the moment when an actor performs Tubes for the first time before an audience. “I had to create a new spine,” Cates says. “They told me my head hung forward and my butt stuck out. The look of a Blue Man is so important. I had to relearn how to move, down to the tiniest detail.” Whether drumming on industrial tubing, spitting paint onto spinning canvases, or turning regurgitated food into art, the performers follow a routine choreographed almost breath by breath. Cates says it’s not uncommon for the actors, even those who’ve been in the show since it opened in 1991, to meet once a week to review videotape of their performances.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Between stints as a waiter, dog walker, and day-care worker, Cates did some theater: The Enormous Room at Next, Othello at Court, understudying at Steppenwolf. In late 1995 he hooked up with director Dexter Bullard to help create Plasticene, a movement-based theater company that drew brief critical acclaim. “We did two shows in three years, not exactly a body of work,” he says with a wince. Then last spring his friend Brigid Murphy phoned him to let him know Blue Man Group was holding auditions. As impresario of Milly’s Orchid Show she’d hosted their act several times. “I can’t pull any strings,” Cates remembers her telling him, “but you’re the right height and you have the right bone structure.”
