What is theater about anyway? Is it about love, or life, or death? Is it about entertainment and enjoyment, about music and spectacle, about acting and art? Glass Mind Theatre’s Brainstorm Volume 2: Baltimore Mixtape touches on each of these in its mostly successful two-hour-ish run, encompassing six miniplays from six minds, each inspired by two songs taken from a pool of suggestions from audience members collected over the last few months.

A similar question is asked about midway through “Poetic Meat,” the first play, albeit about poetry. Three diners in a greasy spoon discuss the death of a fellow regular, a solitary man who came every day to sip coffee and scribble on his legal pad. They called him the poet, though no one had seen his jealously guarded work. Diner 3 (J. Hargrove) asks, “What is poetry about anyway?,” and Diners 1 and 2 (Lauren Saunders and Siarra T. Mong, respectively) try to help him consider it. It’s an interesting little play, and a good way to open the production.

The rest of the first half spirals downward pretty quickly, though through no real fault of the actors. “Which Way We Step” finds Lorraine (Amy Patrick) on her wedding day, a bright young woman with a less-than-bright life, which we learn about through a series of flashbacks. Patrick does a solid job, but Erin Boots, who plays Lorraine’s sister in her first role of the night, is fantastic, and proves perhaps the most enjoyable to watch throughout the show. The play itself is a bit contrived, though, its good-girl-in-a-bad-home meme a bit too familiar.

The next bit, “Effect of Songs,” is a mess. It seems to be an abstract depiction of love, which could be kind of neat if done better, but here it’s simply a bewildering mix of boys, girls, umbrellas, apples, white dresses, headphones, and a one-man chorus (Kevin Griffin Moreno). Perhaps it would make more sense to one who is familiar with the two Joanna Newsom songs by which “Effect” is inspired, but even so, it’s unreasonable to expect that kind of required reading from the audience.

The evening’s second half proves much stronger. It opens with “Dust,” a 10-minute piece written by eight high school students at the Baltimore Lab School that’s remarkably adult. Set in 1930s Texas, “Dust” features a crooked reverend (Alexander Scally) who “rescued” the young Isaiah (Shaun Vain) after his mother cut out his tongue. The boy now has visions, and the reverend, accompanied by his begrudging daughter Kit (Boots), uses him to kidnap naive women wooed by Isaiah’s mystical powers. It’s weird and uncomfortable, but in a way that good theater should be.

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