Five weeks to the moon! In 1964 Zambia won its independence, and a schoolteacher announced that the new nation would beat the superpowers to the moon. It sounds invented, which is presumably why the Royal Court’s release calls it “true(ish)”. Ryan Calais Cameron’s The Afronauts sets out to put the story back on the record, and it has five weeks of rehearsal in which to do so.
The play was launched at Rich Mix in Shoreditch on Tuesday 29 September, where the Royal Court and The Rendition marked the final production of the theatre’s 70th anniversary season. Cameron and co-director Monique Touko took part in a Q&A hosted by Zainab, then screened a short film of their research trip to Zambia. In it they sit with young people at a local youth theatre, work through library archives on the space race and eat what the locals eat.
The film makes plain how thoroughly the story had slipped away as several of the people they met had never heard of the space programme, but forgotten history is rarely a hidden one – it is usually just one that nobody has told. Cameron named hearing the play in Zambian voices as the best part of the trip, and the young people at the youth theatre, hearing for the first time a story that was theirs, met it with pride.
If the archives supplied the facts, what Touko calls “sense data” supplied the rest. Her best memory of the trip was the accumulated impression of the country and the people in it, and above all a pride that was welcoming rather than guarded, and a kinship with what others were living through. It is a useful phrase for a director, since it describes the kind of knowledge no library holds. It also explains the weight both directors felt. The young people grasped the magnitude of the story at once, and for two visitors from elsewhere, that demanded honour and authenticity. Touko said that moments left out of the film had shaped the production, and the care they took seems to have started there.
Touko was equally clear about what the play would not be. It is not sunk in trauma but built from imagination and dreaming, and belongs to a vast catalogue of Black stories. She also welcomed the gender balance of a co-directing partnership, a small observation that says something about who is allowed to lead the telling.
The film is itself an argument. Both directors maintain that theatre should document its processes far more often, since vlogging the work turns it into an archive in itself. There is a pleasing symmetry in a company that found its story in archives making a case for building new ones.
What does The Afronauts ask of its audience? Touko’s answer was to go beyond your confines. Cameron’s was a question, and a sharp one. What is the cost of dreaming?
The cast was revealed on stage. Lucian Msamati (Slow Horses, Game of Thrones, Conclave) leads as Edward. Ama Qamata, known for Netflix’s Blood & Water, makes her UK stage debut as Matha. Ivanno Jeremiah, who played Sidney Poitier in Cameron’s Retrograde, plays Simon. They are joined by Chomba S. Taulo as Ben, Munashe Chirisa as Cheelo, Pamela Nomvete as Grace, Lukwesa Mwamba as Liji and Prince Kundai as David. Soutra Gilmour designs the set, Kinnetia Isidore the costumes and Khalil Madovi the score.
Afronauts runs at The Royal Court, London from 14th November until Saturday 19th December.