I recently worked on a project in which the director spent a fair amount of time arranging actors in space so that viewers could observe how the actions of one character affected another. That principle of basic stagecraft is sublimely flouted by Forum Theatre’s production of Charles L. Mee’s bobrauschenbergamerica. The black box of Round House Theatre’s Silver Spring second stage is configured galley style, and director Derek Goldman often positions his players at opposite ends of the playing space, so we in the audience ping-pong from one to another, watching reactions. Often there are little wordless subplots going on in the corners of the stage, bits of nonsense worthy of Ernie Kovacs, and we just don’t know where to look.
It’s an exuberant production of Mee’s dramatic collage that matches the tone of sculptor Robert Rauschenberg’s three-dimensional assemblages of castoffs and intimate materials. Consider Carl’s (Aaron Reeder’s) joyful dance with a load of laundry, or the zany movie scenario described by Becker (Maboud Ebrahimzadeh) and acted out by the ensemble cast, or the delicious batch of martinis mixed by Phil’s Girl (Chelsey Christensen). The grounded Annie Houston (as Bob’s Mom) digs into Rauschenberg’s small town roots with a narration fit for an old photo album but set on a slideshow of the artist’s works. In this yard sale of the mind, people expound on astronomy while slurping a Texas picnic’s worth of watermelon, or rant about sexual politics while stuffing cake in their mouths. Or beat the crap out of an aluminum trash can with a baseball bat. Or just tell silly chicken jokes.
The final tableau, in which all of Rauschenberg’s ladders to the stars and bathtubs and old license plates are brought center stage into one meta-assemblage, is sublime.
- bobrauschenbergamerica, by Charles L. Mee, directed by Derek Goldman, Forum Theatre, Silver Spring, Maryland