bobrauschenberg
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Painter, sculptor, photographer, and performance artist Robert Rauschenberg changed the look of 20th-century visual art by combining disparate objects — sometimes from the streets — into cohesive works that commented on contemporary society. So it’s no wonder that he’s inspired a theater piece by Charles L. Mee, who cites collagist Max Ernst as one of his influences, and director Anne Bogart, who begins by asking her actors to combine unrelated texts, movements, and props into scenes. “When Ernst made a collage,” Mee says, “he took material of the real world and rendered it into a hallucination.”
bobrauschenbergamerica
was created by Mee and Bogart’s SITI Company, which begins performing it this Friday at American Repertory Theatre. Mee cautions, “It’s not a biography. It’s not about him. It’s about the world as he sees it, a theater piece as he would have made it.” Rauschenberg in fact never appears on stage, though “Bob’s Mom” is a character in the 100-minute work.
Bogart credits Mee with jump-starting the play, which premiered at Actors Theatre of Louisville in 2001. He had attended the 1997 Guggenheim retrospective of 400 works by Rauschenberg. “When I saw the exhibition, I said, ‘Of course.’ ” He called Bogart, whom he credits as a theatrical mentor as well as a friend. “Although I didn’t know much about Rauschenberg, I agreed because I trusted Chuck’s taste. As a company we are so disciplined with our training. What we learned from Rauschenberg is actually to do things because they feel good. It gave us such freedom.”
On stage the work unfolds in 42 scenes that depict mid-20th-century life in America through dialogue, music, and dance. Bogart: “It’s an odd celebration of our wacky, violent, innovative culture. We actually made the piece before 9/11. Its relevance just skyrocketed afterward because of the Americana theme.”
The project began with Mee compiling three different lists: recurring objects in Rauschenberg’s art; texts that these objects brought to mind; activities that would relate to them. He brought these lists to a workshop with the SITI Company. After they added their perceptions, he came up with a draft that was later reworked by students at the SITI summer program at Skidmore College. “I came back with this pile of stuff, not a theater piece but maybe an anthology. So then I thought, ‘What would Rauschenberg have done?’ Oh yeah, he would have chosen whatever he loved. So I chose whatever I loved.”
Mee has never met Rauschenberg, but the artist saw the production at Brooklyn Academy of Music. “He seemed to like it,” Mee says, adding, “I think what’s appealing about Rauschenberg’s work is that it’s the spirit of how we wish we were as Americans. He was incredibly democratic, open, optimistic, egalitarian — inclusive before anyone knew the word.”
BOBRAUSCHENBERGAMERICA
| American Repertory Theatre, Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St, Cambridge | September 8–October 7 | $15-$76 | 617.547.8300
On the Web
American Repertory Theatre://www.amrep.org