This Sydney World Pride performance is throwing a party to 'celebrate the end of the world'

Emma Ruben
Emma Ruben Published February 16, 2023 at 4.10am (AWST)

The last woman on Earth is having a party to end the world. And you can attend it. Or at least attend the show.

Sydney World Pride begins February 17 and with it comes a plethora of First Nations stories and creatives putting on shows, exhibitions and talks to celebrate the event.

For Pride, Carly Sheppard and Kamarra Bell-Wykes are bringing their well-renowned show Chase to Eora (Sydney).

Chase is the last woman left on Earth and she's putting on a party filled with YouTube subscribers and her best mates just to celebrate.

Takalaka performance artist and co-divisor of Chase, Carly Sheppard said the show is more than just what it seems.

"Chase was the last person on Earth and she's slowly processing all of these beliefs, systems, mythologies and pop culture references of what it has been to be human," she said.

Yagera and Butchalla co-divisor and director of Chase, Kamarra Bell-Wykes said herself and Sheppard worked cohesively to create and devise the show into what it is now.

"It's about coping mechanisms when you're the last person on Earth and it's set on the brink of existence...it's intense," she said.

"The way Carly and I make work is we tap in and channel. I suppose we have our ideas but hten we just start to allow those ideas to come from source to discover what the story is.

"I think within our work there's always this undercurrent of a song line and it's a contemporary song line as we're contemporary theatre makers.

"But we're very much still operating the way that our ancestral lines would have as well."

Carly Sheppard plays main character Chase, in the show Chase. Photo credit: Tamara Scott.

Sheppard echoed Bell-Wykes sentiments and said their work has a lot more subtle hints to their heritage and their identity as First Nations people.

"A conversation that comes up often when Kamara and I are making work is we don't have to try and make our work noticeably Black for the white zeitgeist," she said.

"It's just Black because we're Black and whatever we make, whatever we come up with, it comes from our heritage because that's who we are."

Sheppard and Bell-Wykes describe Chase as "freakin' nuts" and makes audience question "what the hell was that?" but also leaves audiences wanting more.

Chase found it's way onto the Sydney World Pride schedule because festival creative director Ben Graetz loved it.

"Ben was like we want this show and we were like yes we want to do it," Sheppard said.

"I'm a queer person and I've worked with Ben before on a bunch of different things but Chase the character is queer by definition.

"She shifts binaries on everything and expectations on everything, you cannot profile her."

Chase is part of the Marri Madung Butbut: The First Nations Gathering Space and is showing at Pride from February 26 to 28.

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National Indigenous Times

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