The “Why To” Manual

Hank Wallace turned me on to a post by Allison Shapira where she summarizes a key point from Rob Walker's writeup of the Blue Man Group - the "Why To" manual.


This "Actors' Journal" is not so much a how-to manual as a why-to manual; it's not about stage directions, but rather tells the story of the show step by step, from the point of view of the Blue Men. As a decoding and deconstruction of Blue Man's at-times baffling, even mystical behavior, it's a fascinating document, thick with references to everything from Being There to George Bernard Shaw to Robert Motherwell to the caves of Lascaux. Some explanations are straightforward — "The Blue Men are not aliens" — and others are more subtle, as when the trio's harmonic "three as one" relationship is described in terms of "blesh," a mix of blend and mesh borrowed from Theodore Sturgeon's science fiction novel More Than Human.

What would a "Why To" manual look like for a development team?