Indiana Alumni Magazine
These talented performers have their roots in Bloomington. Now on Broadway, the Tony Award-winners are ...
BLASTing Off!
by Jane Soung
Blast draws heavily on its Star of Indiana ancestry, with the brass and percussion making up two of the three
main ensembles. Courtesy photo.
In the mid-1980s, Bill Cook, head of a Bloomington-based conglomerate best known as a leader in medical devices and supplies since 1963, wanted to give something back to the community.
A few years earlier, Cook, LLD'93, and his son, Carl, had been captivated when they saw a drum and bugle corps competition on television. Their mutual fascination led Carl to march in a corps and moved Cook, an IU trustee from 1995 to 1998, to investigate funding the first corporately sponsored drum and bugle corps, Star of Indiana, which he founded in 1984.
That was the genesis of Blast, a combination of instrumental music and outdoor marching pageantry transformed to a theatrical setting. The show premiered in London in December 1999 and opened on Broadway this April. Blast has been selling so well that its original 10-week contract was recently extended to Jan. 6, 2002. The recipient of a Tony Award in May, it's an authentic Hoosier hit.
From the beginning, Cook wanted the best, so he hired James Mason, who already had won a Drum Corps International world championship, as Star of Indiana's founding director. Under Mason, the corps quickly made a name for itself. But not content with another world championship, won in 1991, Mason decided to move the 128-member corps from a football field to a large indoor stage. To help adapt the production to a theatrical setting and to turn instrumentalists into actors, Cook brought in IUB theater and drama professor George Pinney as acting director.
"When you consider musical theater, you think of the actor-singer-dancer: the triple threat," says Pinney. "In Blast, it's the quadruple threat: the instrumentalist-actor-singer-dancer. In addition, the visual ensemble does all that spinning, tossing, and throwing, so they manipulate equipment plus acting, singing, and dancing."
What exactly is Blast? Some have likened it to Disney shows, others to Stomp or Riverdance. Mason, now the show's producer and artistic director, describes Blast as "a celebration of instrumental music and outdoor marching pageantry, put into a theatrical setting. Blast is almost like animation, only in Blast, the animation comes to life, with real people playing the music and interpreting it visually."
The show maintains strong links to its drum and bugle corps heritage, but with the manipulation of props, dramatic lighting, intricate choreography, costumes, and staging effects, it's a new theatrical and musical experience. There are three main ensembles: the brass, the percussion, and a visual ensemble that works with slightly modified versions of the traditional Winter Guard flag, saber, and rifle.
At any given moment, streamlined Plexiglas rifles with built-in glow-in-the-dark sticks may be tossed 20 feet into the air, multiple-colored flags may be spinning, and any combination of more than 300 brass and percussion instruments, from cornets and bongos to steel drums and didgeridoos (a native Australian instrument), is playing.
The show is organized around colors. It opens with cool colors — blues and greens — then warms up during the second act to close red-hot. "Those colors were our guide in choosing the music," Pinney explains. "We went through a color wheel and talked about music in relation to the colors. For example, green is 'Appalachian Spring,' and red is 'Malaguena.'"
Warming up the show also allows the cast to "embrace the audience and interact with them," says Mason. While some may cringe at the thought of audience involvement, Pinney says the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
Benjamin Harloff serenades two members of the visual ensemble on his trumpet in "Malaguena." Courtesy photo.
"One of my favorite numbers is 'Land of Make Believe,' where the whole theater is turned into a big party," Pinney explains. "There are players in the balcony, around the floor, on stage. And the lead bounces around the theater." The constant movement allows each section of the audience to have its own special performance. No one is left out.
This interaction and involvement may be one reason the show has been a hit. But while audiences rave, the show has received some scathing reviews.
After Blast's premiere in April, New York Times theater reviewer Bruce Weber wrote, "It was evident at a recent performance that their drum-and-bugle arrangements of composers like Maurice Ravel ('Bolero,' of course) and Chuck Mangione, not to mention their Vegas-y physical antics, have the power to rouse theatergoers who are eager to be roused. I was definitely in the disgruntled minority. But if you go to Broadway expecting to be moved and not just petted, you may react as I did. 'Blast!' bored me cross-eyed."
Still, the show has garnered as many positive reviews as it has negative ones, and crowds are flocking to see it. In May, Blast received a Tony Award for special theatrical event and was nominated for another in choreography. Its current success has led to the creation of two new casts, who have begun rehearsing for a North American tour in the fall and a European tour or possibly another London run. These new members will eventually be blended with the current Broadway cast.
Pinney assures show-goers that they'll see the Broadway show even if they don't see it on Broadway. "It will be a little different here, a little different there, to point out the individual strengths of that cast. But it's basically the same show," he says.
Because of Blast's Bloomington beginnings, some of the nearly 200 people involved in its production have close ties to IUB. Seven members of the Broadway cast are graduates or were students at IUB before joining the show. Benjamin Harloff, BM'99, joined Star of Indiana in 1990, when he was 14 and it was still a drum and bugle corps. He has experienced Star's evolution into Blast and plans on staying with the show for as long as possible.
"This is the job I've been training for all my life, playing trumpet and moving," Harloff says. "The most enjoyable part of the show for me is when I am standing on stage with dancers right in front of me, and I can play to them. I see their emotions, and I see what they are trying to say to the audience. I try to express the same emotions with my music."
Other cast members chose to take a leave of absence from their IU education to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Benjamin Handel, a native of Warsaw, Ind., came to IUB in the fall of 1998. He joined Marching Hundred and several music ensembles, but by the end of his freshman year, he declared a history major.
It looks like that may change. "When I go back to school, I'll be a music major," Handel says, "and I'll probably have to start over."
As a percussionist, Handel is the main conga player and the "crazy drummer guy" for the show.
IUB theater and drama professor George Pinney, right, celebrates with visual ensemble member Jim Moore
at the reception following Blast's Broadway premiere. Photo Lyn Hughes.
"At one point I run across the stage with my hair smoking," reports the former IU student. "At another point I steal a tuba and play a solo."
Blast's cast hails from all over the United States and even from Tokyo. Twelve-hour rehearsal days and several week-long runs on the road have built a strong connection. But this strength also has its downside. As Handel explains, "It's hard to have any privacy, and it can be tough working with all your friends. [Also], whenever someone new comes in, it's really tough for them to break in and feel like part of the group."
Mason and his creative team already have plans to take the Blast concept one step further. "We look in the future to create new shows, much like the Cirque du Soleil has different editions," Pinney explains. "The next show might be based on numbers, seasons of the year, or the elements of earth, wind, water, and fire."
With a show on Broadway, two tours in the offing, and a Tony award, there's little time to discuss ideas for new shows. For Pinney, it was a crazy, busy spring. He was in the classroom during the week, with weekends in New York. But he believes his Broadway experience will benefit his teaching.
"My work at IUB will be enhanced by knowing firsthand what is expected in the professional world," he says. "I will be able to better prepare my students to bridge the gap between the classroom and the professional stage."
For now, Pinney plans on being involved with the show "as long as there is a Blast — which I hope is forever." 
Jane Soung, BS'00, is the editorial intern at the Indiana Alumni Magazine.