What does it take to become a member of Blue Man Group, the multimedia ensemble that blends percussion, performance art, science, high tech, and three alienlike bald guys painted a distinct shade of indigo?

If Russell Rinker is any indication, you have to have worked in just about every corner of the performance world. Speaking to the Georgia Straight from a tour stop in Eureka, California, where he and his blue brothers have just finished a hefty breakfast at a historic lumberjack diner, he talks about growing up immersed in a variety of art forms. From four years old, he played the piano and sang, joining the marching band as a pit percussionist in his rural Virginia high school. In college he got a degree in English and theatre, delving into everything from Shakespeare to light opera and musicals, even taking a brief turn into stage fighting and a Wild West show.

“I try to keep my bag of tricks full,” says Rinker, who knew he could bring it all together when he moved to Chicago and saw Blue Man Group for the first time. “I thought it was cool, it was weird and I liked that it was so original, plus it had music. I thought I would do it a year or two, and that was 10 or 11 years ago.”

What’s unusual for Rinker is that, though much of his career he’s used his voice, the bizarre Blue Men don’t ever speak on-stage. “That really makes my family sad,” he says jokingly. “If I was touring Les Miz I think my mother would be much happier. When I first started, my grandma said, ‘Do they know you can sing? Because if you tell them maybe they can work that into the show,’ ” he adds, laughing to imagine his Blue Man breaking out a guitar and launching into a ballad.

That couldn’t be farther from what the internationally touring hit does on-stage these days. Though it had its beginnings in the 1980s with three young artists busking and playing concerts around Manhattan, the group has grown to become a wild spectacle that mixes the avant-garde and the cartoonish. Famous for turning pipes into percussion instruments, the Blue Men also drum away on glowing instruments filled with neon paint, splattering it in crazy, kaleidoscopic explosions. Other routines work their wide-eyed, quizzical wonder, from tossing marshmallows into each other’s mouths to serving a woman from the audience a fine dinner of Twinkies. Rinker says the new touring show is even more high-tech, with much (wordless) commentary on our wired world.

“Three giant iPhones come out of the ceiling and we interact with them, sort of asking, ‘Are we more connected or disconnected?’ ” Rinker says. “One thing about the show is the audience gets to experience the world through the Blue Man’s eyes; we learn about ourselves through the Blue Men.”

After so many years under the blue makeup, Rinker has come to see the show as a mix of vaudeville and almost primal storytelling. “Blue Man is like a futuristic alien but also like a caveman,” he riffs.

Rinker admits it’s a surreal gig; he loves nothing more than wearing his costume, mingling with audiences after the show, or walking through a casino in Las Vegas, where the production has a glitzy, long-term home. Certainly, it’s nothing he could ever have pictured himself doing back when he was playing piano and drumming for his marching band. He admits wearing the blue skin will never feel entirely normal. Says Rinker: “I still step back and say, ‘Wow this is a crazy thing I’m doing!’ ”