On one cruise, we met an “anonymous rock star” and if you think that’s an oxymoron, then you need to meet Andrew Calvert, one of the most delightful performers on the seas.
Andrew is a Blue Man.
That means he performs on the Norwegian Epic (where we saw him), or in Las Vegas, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, Vienna…or any of the 10 cities where Blue Man Group entertains.
The “anonymous rock star” definition is his. To kids who seem him on the stage, he’s a 
rock star. He’s anonymous because anybody could be in the elevator with him and never know it.
“I sometimes go to the kids areas on the ship and help out the councilors who work there… councilors work their socks off!” he says. “I enjoy working with kids. If I ask them where I work, they know I’m not a councilor, so sometimes they guess I’m a Blue Man.”
And he almost wasn’t.
An Englishman, he was in his third-year of acting school when there was an open call for Blue Men. The criteria was you had to be between 5’10” and 6’2″ and you had have an athletic-to-medium build, some acting ability and some drumming skills.
Here’s how Andrew remembers it:
“I decided to go, even though I’d never picked up drumsticks. I was only 20 years old. I took the tube to the place, and as I got out of the tube [subway] station, I thought ‘I’m too tall, and I can’t play drums…I’m going to make a fool of myself!’ I went back to the tube station, and then I thought “I need to start taking risks, so why not? You gotta take the risk!”
The acting part included a little…faking, and not just with drumsticks.
“I’m a bit on the tall side, 6′-2 1/2,” he says. “You spend your whole life walking tall, and 
here I was kind of slouched to make myself look a bit shorter.”
After the interview, a drum solo and five rounds of acting, he made the cut.
“They said: ‘You’ve got great character but you really can’t play drums!’ They hired me anyway and sent me to drum school!”
That was in 2006. Except for a break to play Shakespearean roles in 2009 (“a real passion of mine”), being blue has dominated his resume.
Calvert estimates he is one of “about 70” Blue Men. There are always four on the Epic, three on stage for each show, of which there are eight on a week-long cruise. Sometimes the four meet for the first time on the ship. They cross-train for all three roles because the roles, while they may look somewhat the same, are different. They get a cap glued to their heads before being painted over their wet suits, and they have to learn to stay accurate throwing marshmallows and paint gum balls, even when the ship is in rough water.
“The true meaning,” he says, “of rock and roll.”