A Daylight Connection bring their renegade ethos and punk reputation to Melbourne Fringe Festival with their new work, THE BLOK!
Kamarra Bell-Wykes and Carly Sheppard present a hilarious portrait of what it means to be an artist right now.
THE BLOK! coming to Melbourne Fringe in October, explores the idea of the creator and creation and the symbiotic relationship between the two through ego, spirit and art.
The plot follows THE MASTER, played by Sheppard, “the greatest artist of all time” who is set to create the artistic vindication that will save the world coming into conversation with THE CREATOR, a polyphonic vision of God as a Blak women, written by Blak women. Alexis West will be joining the company as a guest artist to take on the role.
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“We’re very South Park, or Brechtian in the way we name these things,” Bell-Wykes says about the overtness of the characters. The two-hander piece will be performed with paired-back staging and supported with a sonic composition by longtime collaborator of the team, Small Sound.
“[In] our other works, Chase and A Nighttime Travesty, we use a lot of props and elaborate sets. This is going to be pretty stripped back. It’s still going to be very funny, and simple.”
A Daylight Connection is a company that refuses categorisation. With Sheppard’s background in dance and experimental theatre, and Bell-Wykes’ directorial and dramaturgical prowess, the team elevate each other and offer something visceral, immediate and different. With two successful performances under their belts, they’ve been conscious of not limiting themselves by trying to recreate the winning formula, but keeping their artistry reactive to the world around them.
“We have to be careful not to put ourselves in our own boxes. We’ve made two works and they were successful based on these things, but is this the constant criteria we are working to? Can we make a serious work? What is the formula that is starting to develop? It’s exciting; each time we make a work we are learning about ourselves and the process.”
The piece is currently being co-devised by Bell-Wykes and Sheppard as a part of the Darebin Arts Speakeasy Program. The pair are no strangers to devising new works and have curated their rehearsal and creative style into what they call “a synergy”. They’re always in collaboration, even when performing in separate works, eager to continue exploring and using theatre as a vehicle to interrogate the world around them.
“We know when an idea is ready to be told. It’s this moment, now, this story. There is an immediacy to our work,” Bell-Wykes says, as Sheppard agrees.
“We sort of have to figure out where and when something is supposed to come through and usually, our old people will be telling us.”
The idea for THE BLOK! was born at the Bright and Blak Literary Festival, where the two decided to explore the idea of a creator experiencing artistic block.
“Let’s put a writer on the stage, they’ll love it,” they laugh. The piece moves beyond the idea of the lone writer experiencing a creative block and into an existential exploration of the relationship between art and its creator.
“We like to push into the space that hasn’t been walked before,” says Bell-Wykes. Speaking with grounded confidence, she showcases A Daylight Connection’s eagerness to bring new and challenging theatre to Melbourne audiences.
Bell-Wykes and Sheppard speak almost as one, both full of passionate desire to create that which speaks to the marginalised, to their own experiences, and to the eternal question of our fate and its connection to a creator force.
“We will interrogate the representation of who God is and double down on it,” they claim.
The piece will see the company “questioning God to find out who the real master is” through “the unsayable and the undefinable”, pushing to discover “what’s real, what’s true” about the relationship between an artist and their own work.
THE BLOK! runs at Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre from 8-18 October. Get tickets here.
