What kind of theater would artist Robert Rauschenberg create if he were a playwright and not a painter? That’s the premise Charles Mee began with when he produced bobrauschenbergamerica, the latest offering from Cambridge’s American Repertory Theatre.

The play, which runs about 1 hour and 45 minutes without intermission, is a series of disparate vignettes, a wacky collage put together much like Rauschenberg’s own work. It is directed by Anne Bogart, who was, of course, for a brief while head of our own Trinity Rep, and performed by her crack SITI Company.

But don’t go thinking you’ll learn a lot about Rauschenberg or his art if you go to see this mind-bending melange, even though the play was inspired by a Rauschenberg retrospective at the Guggenheim. Indeed, the character of Rauschenberg never appears in the play. But the spirit of his art does, his ability to juxtapose bits of junk in ways that made artistic sense and challenged our view of the world.

Mee, who is SITI’s resident playwright, began by compiling a list of objects in Rauschenberg’s work, texts that reminded him of those images and movements. He took those to a SITI workshop and let the actors run with his jottings. From there he put together a giant puzzle of a piece, one with no plot, no linear time line, just 42 fragmented scenes that reflect life in the heartland.

The stories are told by a trucker, a deranged pizza delivery man, an on-again-off-again couple (she stuffs her face with cake as she tries to explain the emotional differences between men and women), and a woman on roller skates.

Then there’s Bob’s Mom, a demure, wilting southerner played by Kelly Maurer. Maurer shows us slides of young Bob with his bike and dog, and reminds us that “art was not part of our lives.”

They take us on a journey through an improbable landscapes unfurled on a huge American flag that is the set, a vast panorama peppered with a picnic, yard sale and rollicking square dance.

This is Bogart’s third trip to ART in recent years. Her other offerings, Life is a Dream and La Dispute, were controlled, stylized efforts, in which every gesture was carefully choreographed. But bobrauschenbergamerica, which premiered at the 2001 Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, is a raucous, freewheeling affair that seems sloppy by comparison. It is certainly more open-ended, more unstructured.

At one point, actor Barney O’Hanlon steps front and center and addresses the audience, saying that the company put on “whatever we liked and hoped you’d enjoy it.”

And that seems to be the case. The assault of images is endless and often absurd.

Phil the Trucker, played by burley Leon Ingulsrud, entertains the audience with a string of chicken jokes, as a man who has been shot lies dying on the floor; Stephen Webber, who appeared in a bath towel and shower cap singing I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire, dons ear plugs and flattens a trash can with a baseball bat; a bagpiper marches across the stage as Maurer waves a tiny American flag; Akiko Aizawa, dressed in a bikini, mixes up a giant martini on a sheet of plastic and sloshes about in it, spitting olives at Ingulsrud.

As a slice of Americana, Mee’s vignettes are surprisingly tame, surprisingly nostalgic, more an ode to the ’50s and ’60s than a representation of the country in these menacing post-9/11 times. One reason for that is that the play was written before the terrorist attacks. But still, it is remarkably devoid of politics, preferring to muse more about the workings of the universe than the goings on in Washington.

Folks in this play are content to eat fried chicken, swing on a tire and stare at the night sky.

What we learn from bobrauschenbergamierca is hard to say. Does it make sense? Not in the conventional way. But then that is true of Rauschenberg’s collages. There is talk of love, murder and physics in this play, of all–you-can-eat diners, poetry and art.

“Art,” says O’Hanlon, “helps us practice what it is to be free.”

The point of the play is, like a Zen koan, in the telling of it, in the constant shift of images (a stuffed deer in a tutu, a chicken in a baby carriage) and the alluring fabric that comes from such a shattered narrative.

Of course, for those looking for a traditional theater that starts at point “A” and makes its way logically to point “B,” bobrauschenbergamerica might seem pointless, and more than a little frustrating.

It’s a something that requires openness on the part of the viewer, an ability to go with the flow. And for someone of that ilk, it can be surprisingly satisfying.

It’s like Bob’s Mom says: “Isn’t it great he can see the beauty in everything?”

bobrauschenbergamerica runs through Oct. 7 at the American Repertory Theatre, 64 Brattle St. Cambridge. Tickets range from $15 for students to $76. Call (617) 547-8300 or visit www.amrep.org.