Many, many years ago, I was at a random party where there were some people from Broadway (mostly from behind the scenes people). One small group was impressed that I, a non-theater random, knew what a dramaturg did when I eventually asked what they did. [1]

During the course of our conversation, they told me that the original Blue Men who started the original Blue Man Group had families in Japan and elsewhere who literally mortgaged their own properties (or whatever the equivalent is) to get the original show off the ground.

The genius of Blue Man Group, to me, was always that their branding made the person performing the role irrelevant (outside of standard physical characteristics). Having no speaking roles, they were all Blue Men. They were all part of their same planet.

[1] www.lmda.org/dramaturgy