Charles Mee & Anne Bogart

HERE Art Center's Pete McCabe speaks with playwright Charles Mee and director Anne Bogart, Artistic Director of SITI Company, where Mee is Playwright in Residence. Bogart, a frequent collaborator with Mee, shares a previously-secret period of McCabe's past and discusses how SITI, a "gym for the soul," is particularly suited for bringing the sundry meditative and delightful elements of Mee's work to the stage. Mee, in turn, discusses the theatrical elements of Robert Rauschenberg's work, and how this inspired him to create his seminal bobrauschenbergamerica, less--indeed, not at all--a document of the artist's work than an exploration and embodiment of its essence. The work of these three artists--Mee, Bogart and Rauschenberg--all address notions of America and "Americanness," which leads to a discussion of the state of America and the salience of engagement and presence in any work of art, elements sorely lacking in much of the dissociated, irony-laden work of the contemporary period. They also discuss the history, future, practice and mission of the peculiar and unique SITI Company (24 minutes).