Reflections from MICC

In July, Julie and I travelled to Montréal,  

or as the locals pronounce it, Montréal. 

We took part in the annual arts market of the Montréal Complètement Cirque festival. We entered a week of full schedules, half-full theatres, and empty wallets.  

I’m midair somewhere between Dallas and Naarm, where I find myself reflecting on the residue of it all.  

Arts markets are peculiar places. Everyone’s speaking the same language but not quite saying the same thing. Each conversation is wrapped in strategy. There's an urgency in the air but nothing due.  

It’s very hard to be truly honest in that context, it’s what I imagine politics is like  

but with worse coffee and more sequins. 

And yet, despite the posturing, there are many, many ideas and questions.  

Can the Blak Voice Speak in the Universal Language? 

The moment I keep thinking about, even days later, came from a panel of international agents. Someone in the audience asked whether artists should consider the trends of the venues they hope to tour to when making new work. 

The response was clear and immediate: no. Focus on your story. Follow your passion. 

The panel urged us to find our unique voice. They posed the question: Why bring a story halfway around the world if someone local can tell their own version? And when viewed through an economic lens, that’s a fair point. 

I understood this response. I even agree with it—chasing trends is often futile. By the time you see them, it’s already too late. But still, something about the answer left me uneasy. 

What was missing, I think, was the audience. Trends, however shallow they may seem, often reflect what audiences are leaning towards. And I don’t know that we can ever truly make work without considering how people will receive it. So the deeper question becomes: how do we create niche, specific works that ask peculiar artistic questions, while also meeting a wide breadth of audience? 

There’s something dull about universality for the sake of it. Stories flattened into palatable exports often lose what makes them urgent in the first place. 

And so I’m thinking about whether deeply local work like First Nations stories can resonate overseas.  

Yes, they’re exotic.  

But do they connect elsewhere?  

Circus is often celebrated for its global accessibility; there’s no language barrier. But the more we interrogate the artform, the more we see that even circus has dialects. One of those is Blak circus. And like any dialect, it has a rhythm, a history, a context, a location. 

So again the dilemma: Can the Blak Voice Speak in the Universal Language?  

Can someone who doesn’t know the conventions of the wider language recognise the voice if it comes with a thick accent?