Maxim Bouffard and Alejandro Rodriguez are now among the proud, the few — an elite ensemble of paint-spewing, marshmallow-catching, drum-thumping, cereal-crunching performers.
In other words, they are Blue Men. Bouffard and Rodriguez recently found out that they’d survived a grueling seven-week training course at the Briar Street Theatre — the first ever held in Chicago and one the Sun-Times was able to observe.
Will fame and fortune now follow Bouffard and Rodriguez?
The Blue Man Group folks don’t disclose wages.
As for fame …
“It’s so interesting to do a show and have 500 people watch you do something crazy. I had a show where (another Blue Man) threw a marshmallow way too high and I jumped up super high and caught it — and the crowd went crazy,” said Bouffard. “Then you go out and no one will ever recognize you. You are no one.”
Earlier this month, Bouffard picked up a copy of the Sunday Sun-Times with his face front-and-center.
“I asked the girl at the till, ‘Have you ever been on the front page? That’s me!’ She didn’t believe me,” Bouffard said.
It’s all about the Blue Man character and the show.
“No one will succeed at this character if you want to be a star. It won’t give you that because we’re anonymous. What we are in service to is the character as it’s known, not ourselves,” said Matt Ramsey, the show’s associate artistic director.
Rodriguez, who is originally from Mexico but had been living in Berlin, will perform during the upcoming holiday season here in Chicago. Bouffard, a Frenchman living in New York, is heading to Shanghai. Actors are placed based on a location’s current producion needs, but the producers say they also try to eventually place Blue Men in their city of choice.
Rodriguez doesn’t yet know where he’ll be heading after the run at Briar Street.
“I’m very open to all possibilities. That’s my kind of lifestyle — to (go) from one place to another,” he said.
As for Bouffard (who has been to China once before): “I’m super excited. Honestly, this is a dream-type job because I get to perform in another country and get paid to do what I love to do, and also while traveling and discovering new cultures.”