Bob Rauschenberg America

Bob Rauschenberg America opens at Studio One Theatre, Riffe Center on October 29, and it runs through November 14. It's a play about the American artist Robert Rauschenberg, written by the most influential playwright of the 21st century.

The play takes a strange, playful turn right from the start: it imagines Rauschenberg as a dramatist rather than a painter and stages itself as if the artist himself had conceived it. If you know Rauschenberg's work, that makes a lot of sense. He was famous for his combines—those mixed-media pieces that brought together found objects, paint, and collage—and this play works in much the same way. It's described as a collage of people, places, music and dancing, of love stories, picnics, business schemes, shootings, chicken jokes and golfing. It doesn't follow a straight line; it jumps around, gathering different scenes and moods into one big picture.

Underneath all that, there's a specific theme running through it. The production is meant to capture the exhilaration and anxiety of living in a country where people make up their lives as they go. It's less a traditional biography and more a look at a certain kind of American experience—the kind that feels like it's being built on the fly.

It runs from October 29 to November 14 at Studio One Theatre, Riffe Center in Columbus. If you're familiar with Rauschenberg's art, the way the play mirrors his collage style is a good place to start. If you aren't, it's still a chance to see a big-name playwright take a swing at one of the 20th century's most restless artists.