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    Blue Man Group’s Longtime Home Will Stage Off Broadway Dramas

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    A commercial producer active on Broadway and in the West End has signed a long-term lease for Astor Place Theater with plans for shows there.For 34 years, Astor Place Theater, a humble venue in a historic building in Lower Manhattan, was occupied by a single show, Blue Man Group, which spun profits out of performance art.But Blue Man Group closed its New York production in February, and now another company will take a turn making art in the space: No Guarantees Productions, a venture established in 2017 that has put money into multiple Broadway and West End shows.“We love the location, and the theater is in fabulous condition,” said Megan O’Keefe, executive vice president of No Guarantees. She said the company hopes to present three to four Off Broadway shows a year at Astor Place, some of which it will produce, and some of which will be projects developed by other producers who would rent the space.No Guarantees is the latest for-profit company taking over an Off Broadway theater at a time when the commercial Off Broadway sector has been enjoying an unexpected rebound. Another example: Seaview Productions is now operating a Midtown Manhattan venue previously run by the nonprofit Second Stage Theater; the first show at what is now called Studio Seaview is “Angry Alan,” a play starring John Krasinski and currently in previews.“What we’re seeing more and more is that there are a lot of really beautiful shows that just are never going to attract the audience, and/or support the budget, that you increasingly need to put on a flashy Broadway show,” O’Keefe said. “And that’s why I think we’ve seen a real resurgence of interest and popularity in the commercial Off Broadway space.”The theater, with 298 seats, is still owned by some of the co-founders of Blue Man Group, but will be leased by No Guarantees, a theatrical production company.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Blue Man Group’s 34-Year New York Run Comes to an End

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      After 17,800 shows and 82,150 gallons of paint, Blue Man Group is hanging up its bald caps at the Astor Place Theater for good on Sunday. It arrived there in 1991, when George H.W. Bush was president, cellphones were rare and the World Wide Web was two years away. (The group’s first profile in The New York Times existed only on paper.) In the generation since, the trio of hairless, earless, silent, blue-and-black clad performers, who spit paint and sculpt marshmallows, gobble Twinkies and drum in primary colors, unexpectedly became a culture-infiltrating sensation.They achieved this — along with shows in more than a dozen cities across the globe, multiple concert tours, three studio albums, a Grammy nomination, many TV appearances, a book and one indelible sitcom story line — without changing much about their approach. Throughout one of the longest runs in Off Broadway history, they remained proudly on the silly side of performance art. Even without a narrative, they also connected viscerally with audiences, earning a legion of megafans. “We love the idea of a show that is sublime and ridiculous,” said Chris Wink, one of the founding performers.Blue Man Group, which has been owned by Cirque du Soleil since 2017, is not disappearing: long-running shows remain open in Boston, Las Vegas and Berlin, and a return gig is planned for Orlando, Fla. But closing the New York production, where it all began — along with another decades-old production in Chicago — is the end of a chapter. (In a statement, a spokeswoman said Cirque du Soleil was proud of Blue Man Group’s track record, and that it made the “difficult decision” to shutter after “we re-evaluated our current standings.” After declaring bankruptcy in 2020, Cirque du Soleil, the Montreal-based live entertainment behemoth, is controlled by private equity firms.)Paint gets everywhere, often by design and to the delight of fans.The splatter has built up on lighting equipment over the years.Emerging from the East Village arts scene, the original Blue Man Group served as a monument to possibility: D.I.Y. creativity — or unfettered lunacy — could still flourish in New York. That for 34 years it occupied the same bit of desirable real estate, near the downtown mecca of Astor Place, and across from the landmark Public Theater, gave it a stately foundation — even if its 281-seat subterranean space was, almost by design, a little dank. Photos of the bald and the blue loomed outside, part of the urban architecture.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Blue Man Group to End New York Run After Three Decades Off Broadway

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      The troupe is also closing its Chicago company, but continues to perform in Berlin, Boston, Las Vegas and, soon, Orlando.Blue Man Group, the wordless theatrical troupe of drum-beating, paint-splattering, bald blue performers, will end its run in New York on Feb. 2, more than three decades and 17,000 performances after it began.The troupe, which started as experimental street theater and is now a subsidiary of the global circus behemoth Cirque du Soleil, will also end its Chicago run on Jan. 5.But the show will continue to run elsewhere, with long-running companies in Berlin, Boston and Las Vegas, and a forthcoming run in Orlando, where it is scheduled to reopen next spring after a four-year closure prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. There have also been touring productions.The end of the New York production was announced in a news release by Jack Kenn, the company’s managing director; the release did not say why the show was closing, and a spokeswoman for the company declined to provide any further information.The closing at Astor Place Theater in Lower Manhattan comes at a challenging time for theater, as production costs are higher, and audience sizes generally lower, than before the pandemic.Blue Man Group, which began performing at Astor Place in 1991, will conclude its New York run two years after the end of “Stomp,” another wordless, percussion-heavy show that had been an Off Broadway staple since 1994. And “Sleep No More,” an immersive riff on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” that opened in 2011, says its final performance will be Jan. 5. (It has previously postponed closing dates several times.)Off Broadway has been a mixed bag since the 2020 shutdowns — many nonprofits are struggling, staging fewer shows and employing smaller casts than before. But in the commercial Off Broadway arena, there has been a rebound, as a number of shows have found ways to break through and succeed.Some producers now believe that limited run shows have better odds of success, because consumers are more motivated to buy tickets when they know it’s now or never.A new generation of long-running Off Broadway shows has arrived, although generally not with the longevity of Blue Man Group. A few examples: “The Play That Goes Wrong” transferred from Broadway to New World Stages in 2019 and is still running there; a revival of “Little Shop of Horrors” has been running at Westside Theater, also since 2019; and “Titaníque,” now at the Daryl Roth Theater, has been running Off Broadway since 2022. More