Crafted as a “fantastical road trip through the American landscape”, bobrauschenbergamerica is the result of the collision between the irreverent freeform of Robert Rauschenberg’s art and the wildly experimental style of Charles Mee. Robert “Bob” Rauschenberg took everyday objects like light bulbs, tires, mirrors, and scarves and combined them into collages that often seemed to defy logic. Charles Mee took the same concept and used found text to create bobrauschenbergamerica. The play is as much an homage to Rauschenberg’s style as it is to the man himself. Though he never appears in the play, the audience is taken on a tour of America as seen through Rauschenberg’s eyes. We meet a series of eccentric characters and get glimpses into their lives: people like Phil, a folksy trucker, Becker the derelict, and Susan the hapless lover.
The play was originally devised by a group of actors in the famed SITI Company, with the text developed in a series of workshops. The result is a poetic collage of the human experience: heartache, joy, grief, nostalgia, and everything in between. As with all of his plays, Charles Mee encourages diverse/non-traditional casting for any or all of the roles, without regard to race or disability.
bobrauschenbergamerica guide sections
