Credit: Seth Kubersky

Nineteen years after the Blue Man Group debuted their first Orlando production at Universal CityWalk, and six years after they closed it in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world-renowned troupe of percussionist performance artists is back on I-Drive at Icon Park, just down the street from Epic Universe. I recently toured BMG’s new purpose-built venue beneath the Orlando Eye during final preparations for their Friday, May 1, grand opening, where I spoke with team captain Bhurin Sead about his journey to becoming one of the Blue Men and passing their iconic aesthetic down to the newest members.

Sead grew up outside Fort Worth playing music, but says he never considered making his living onstage until he was studying biology at the University of Texas in Austin, where he joined his friends’ Asian American theater troupe. It was a bunch of kids that just wanted to get together and perform, he recalls. “Through that, there’s something about collaborating with other people — being on stage, performing, writing together — that I really enjoyed, but didn’t know what the career options would be, and had no plans of continuing professionally.”

After two and a half years working in a biology lab manufacturing siRNA, Sead was getting the itch to perform again when a Blue Man Group open call notice caught his eye. He’d seen their New York City production as a volunteer usher and been “overwhelmed” by the show, and was familiar with their popular Intel Pentium television ad. The initial audition he went through in 2007 isn’t dissimilar to the ones he leads now, starting with a simple “fixed point” exercise involving standing still and making eye contact.

“What we do in Blue Man is a stripping-away of things, and all that’s really left is us greeting each other with our eyes,” Sead explains. “There’s something about being physically neutral [and] being open and looking at somebody that’s really vulnerable … so an exercise like that really forces people to drop all those habits that we have and just be there with people.”

For the second stage of auditions, prospective Blue Men get into “bald and blue” makeup and learn a portion of the show, after which they may be invited to training, which Sead calls an extended audition process. “When I trained, we would be in a studio for five weeks before we stepped foot on the stage, [but] now it’s evolved to where we found that the only real way to see how someone does is to get them onstage as soon as possible.” 

After about two weeks, new trainees are swapped into portions of actual performances, gradually learning all the parts under the directors’ guidance. “So much about the character is responding to people, responding to the audience, and you just can only do so much of that in a closed space like in a studio; we need to see them in front of an audience.”

During his nearly two decades with the Group, Sead has performed across North America (including one summer in Orlando) and even toured Japan, whose audiences he describes as “very attentive and very generous and very giving in terms of their response.” Perhaps most memorably, he was part of the closing cast when New York City’s run ended last year. “As devastating and sad as it could be at a show closing, I think what it really brought out was how valuable the community was,” Sead recalls of the final performance, which reunited longtime cast members. “There was a lot of love in the room that it felt special to be a part of, even though it was a tough thing.”

Sead has been working on BMG’s Orlando return for over a year, collaborating with artistic director Matt Ramsey on some of the brand-new material that will augment their classic content, which will comprise about two-thirds of the show. “All Blue Man material is iterative; you can plan and conceive ideas, but you won’t really know until it’s in front of a live audience, because so much of what Blue Man does is the relationship [with] the audience.” 

The common thread between the new bits and old, according to Sead, is the underlying theme of connection: “Whether we’re commenting on smartphones, commenting on AI, it’s always geared towards understanding how does that help or not help our connection between people. … When Blue Man started it was about connection. That’s always stayed constant throughout.”

Finally, as a recent Central Florida transplant, Sead says he misses some aspects of life in the Big Apple but praises parts of this area that are “really beautiful … to drive an hour and get to the beach or drive 45 minutes to get to the springs, it’s great.” He’s especially appreciative of the “warm and inviting” welcome given Blue Man Group’s appearance at February’s Immerse Festival, saying it made him realize that “Blue Man has had a presence here. People know who Blue Man are, and they’re very excited to have us back.”

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This article appears in April 29-May 5, 2026.