Theater Piece No. 2 is a joint paper-lecture and performance art work. The performance is conceived as a compendium to a lecture on the music of John Cage, specifically his work done in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s at Black Mountain College. Cage’s creative output at that time culminated in a collaborative, multimedia performance in the summer of 1952 entitled Theater Piece No. 1 (a.k.a. Black Mountain Piece). The performance involved a number of performance elements such as live music, pre-recorded music, dance, film, slides, painting displays, and lectures.

Theater Piece No. 2 is an attempt at emulating (without necessarily recreating) the same type of aesthetic environment in the folds of a lecture on this same topic. The end result is that there are a number of discreet events occurring simultaneously without necessarily being causally related to one another. The observer is awash in multiple sensory stimulants and has the freedom of selecting events, if any, on which to focus and interpreting the gestalt as it pertains to everyday life experiences.

This performance-lecture has been delivered on multiple occasions, including the Re-Viewing Black Mountain College Conference at UNC-Asheville in 2009; The John Cage “Musicircus” at the Kansas City Arts Institute in 2007; and the SEAMUS National Conference at Iowa State University in 2007