Proto Talk with Dana Michel and Eleanor Bauer

After the performance of Mercurial George on the 12th April, Eleanor Bauer will hold a Proto Talk with Dana Michel.

Eleanor Bauer: Proto Talks
Eleanor Bauer proposes a replacement for the conventional after-talk. Instead of trying to explain what we just saw with the already known, rehearsed, and press-released talk, Bauer talks to the artist whose work we’ve just seen about what remains yet unanswered, and perhaps yet to come. Proto Talks depart from what the artist doesn’t know for sure, making public discourse and shared imagination out of nascent ideas that are usually reserved for notebooks, dreams, or conversation with cohorts. Talking about things that aren’t yet fully understood, haven’t yet been realized, or don’t yet have a fully articulated justification, Proto Talks are an exercise in negative capability, in speculative theatre, in thinking together, in sharing the creative and imaginative space of uncertainty where artistic process fumbles around in the dark searching for form. Sometimes we don’t entirely understand things even when they’re finished and performed, so talking about the show we’ve just seen is not off-limits, but Getting all the answers is not the point of Proto talks. After-talks, publicity texts, program notes, and reviews can talk about what we think we know, but Proto Talks are an opportunity to talk about what we know we don’t know.