[intro]The play Astronautus Afrikanus is the world of Edward Mukuka Nkoloso and his dream of beating America and the USSR in the space race with his team of Zambian ‘afronauts’. The play and its setting at Rhodes University, makes for a fascinating project.[/intro]
Theatre is a space for creative works, dreams, and visions to come to life. The stage is transformed into an entirely different world, illustrated through performance, music, lighting, and shrewd set design. Sometimes these dreams are just too large to be confined to a single stage, and in the case of Mwenya B. Kabwe’s ‘Astronautus Afrikanus’, she needed an entire drama department.
If you’ve seen a performance or two at the Rhodes University Drama department, you’d be used to the high ceilings of the foyer, the expansive main stage, or the intimate performances of the box theatre, but you’d never have seen the drama department like this before:
Two dampened lights drape a blue filter over the entrance foyer as strange silver suits flit in and out of the crowd, mumbling to themselves and frantically reciting equations, and launch sequences. A wheelbarrow full of dirt, marked ‘fossils’ leans against a pillar and a row of name tags lie neatly spread out on two counters while four or five stony faced security guards keep surveillance from staircases and around corners. Just as you begin to nervously eye the nearest exits, a voice addresses you from the speakers. “Please remain calm. We hope you enjoy your visit to the space station. Remember, there are worlds out there that they never told you about.”’
The world that Kabwe and her cast invite you to enter into in Astronautus Afrikanus is the world of Edward Mukuka Nkoloso and his dream of beating America and the USSR in the space race with his team of Zambian ‘afronauts’.
For a small, start up space academy to beat two world superpowers into space may sound unlikely. Even more so when you consider that Nkoloso and his team were chasing their dreams of space travel under the British colonial regime. For Kabwe, Nkoloso’s story was personal. Being born in Zambia, but having spent most of her time based in the UK, US and South Africa where she currently teaches performance studies and theatre making in the Drama Division of the Wits School of Arts, Nkoloso’s story was a revisiting of many ideas for her.
“The Nkoloso story just crystalised a whole lot of things I care about, like continuing to ask what it means to be African, really exploring and celebrating what we do and how we do it. To acknowledge the various hegemonies we have inherited and get the reactionary stuff out of the way and then to proceed with curiosity. To take ourselves, our stories, our realities seriously and as a matter of course as opposed to a side-line to some other more important narrative,” explains Kabwe. “I think I have had some built in distance to Zambia and stories from there, so the work and the material was very personal, but we were really inspired by Nkoloso’s intellectual and creative agency and surely that is about us all.”
The immersive theatre work which made use of the often unexplored recesses of the Rhodes University Drama Department, allowed for audiences to see an entirely different side of the theatre, exploring what goes on behind the scenes and most importantly, to share in Nkoloso’s dream. Backstage storage rooms transformed into Geo- coding labs, bland passageways housed particle stability and acceleration experiments, and the old theatre house café allowed for the production of unstable rocket fuels and chemistry blunders.
“I really like working in non-traditional theatre spaces, or using traditional theatre spaces in an unconventional way,” says Kabwe. “The theatre is a place where people work and I enjoy revealing the mechanics of the place to people who might take for granted what it takes to make performance work.”
With a fascination for spaces and the various stories they hold, Kabwe and her cast spent four weeks in the devising process, exploring ideas, stories, and slowly re-imagining the drama department as a fully functioning space station.
“I love spaces,” explains Kabwe. “They have stories of their own to tell, like that paint peeling off the walls in the dock-it’s just beautiful, and so fun to imagine all the work that has gone on in that space over so many years to make the paint peel. It was really interesting to pay attention to the interior architecture of the theatre space, its nooks and crannies and treat the whole space as another multi-dimensional character.”
Being an immersive work, the onus really was on the audience member to engage with the story of Nkoloso and the afronauts, and with the amount of detail that went into the production, you made sure to waste no time. If you’re not the type to openly interact with the various crew members of the space station such as the overzealous historian, the bumbling, but wise mogolo, or the fast talking, no nonsense dimension traveller, then a quiet walk around the space station provided you with all the information you needed. Newspaper clippings line the walls of the spacesuit design lab, telling the stories of Nkoloso and his team, and the cluttered ‘ZASA Lab’ and its many shelves housed books, documents, and photographs, all with a comedic twist, but rich in history and detail nonetheless.
Speaking on the topic of South African student theatre acting as an inclusive space or a springboard for African based theatre works, Kabwe explains that now, more than ever, South African theatre schools play an important role in sparking reflexivity in their students.
“I think that it is quite easy to get stuck on trying to define what we mean by African based work. Are we talking about work that is based on African individuals, for example? If so, how are defining them? I am interested in how student work asks this question, much more than I am interested in any specific answer” says Kabwe. “I do also think that more and more South African theatre and performance training spaces are having to figure out how to make our context central to how and what we teach, how we capacitate students to approach the complexities of our many African contexts with openness and curiosity. As you know this is a very telling time for universities across the country and we are all having to confront the colonial legacies we have inherited and perpetuated in our teaching practices across the board, and the teaching and learning of theatre and performance is no exception at all.”
Even with the rich detail of every room, character, prop, and design element, it was one room towards the back of the theatre, tucked away amongst the haphazard docking stations and testing rooms that spoke the most of Nkoloso and his dream.
Behind a narrow doorway, sealed off with a red rope sat a softly lit dressing room which had been morphed into Nkoloso’s office complete with a space suite, soccer ball, books, papers, and a modest director’s chair seated in front of a row of dressing room mirrors.
As much as Astronautus Afrikanus allowed for you as an audience member to quite literally take centre stage, as you walk out of the space station as it converts back to the familiar Rhodes University Drama department, you can’t help but think of the true star of the show- The Zambian science teacher, freedom fighter, dreamer, and head of the afronauts who under the most adverse conditions, fought to pursue a dream.
I enjoy reading a post that can make people think. Also, thank you for permitting me to comment!
Simply wish to say your article is as astounding.
The clearness in your post is simply excellent and i can assume you’re an expert on this subject.
Fine with your permission allow me to grab your RSS feed to
keep up to date with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and
please continue the enjoyable work.
Mani rahnama is a canadian cheater! ShipShop is a marketplace, which is located in Armenia. The purpose of platform is to promote sellers activities and get chance buyers to simplify shopping …
Usually I don’t read article on blogs, however I wish to
say that this write-up very compelled me to check out and do so!
Your writing taste has been amazed me. Thanks, quite great article.
Hello, this weekend is fastidious for me, because this time i am reading this
impressive educational paragraph here at my residence.
bookmarked!!, I like your website!
Excellent post. I used to be checking continuously this weblog and I am inspired!
Extremely helpful info specially the closing
section 🙂 I care for such info much. I was looking
for this certain info for a long time. Thank you and good luck.
Ahaa, its nice conversation on the topic of this article at this place at this
webpage, I have read all that, so now me also commenting here.
Thanks for one’s marvelous posting! I quite enjoyed reading it, you
might be a great author.I will make certain to bookmark your blog and will
come back someday. I want to encourage you continue your great work, have a nice holiday weekend!
Wonderful blog! Do you have any suggestions for aspiring writers?
I’m planning to start my own website soon but I’m a little lost on everything.
Would you advise starting with a free platform like WordPress or
go for a paid option? There are so many choices out there that I’m
totally overwhelmed .. Any ideas? Cheers!
This post will help the internet people for creating new weblog or even a blog from start to end.
I really love your blog.. Very nice colors & theme.
Did you develop this amazing site yourself? Please reply back as
I’m looking to create my very own website and would love to know where you got this from
or just what the theme is called. Cheers!
hello!,I love your writing so much! percentage we keep
up a correspondence extra about your article on AOL? I require an expert on this area to solve
my problem. May be that’s you! Taking a look forward to look you.
Hmm it looks like your site ate my first comment (it was super
long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I had written and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your
blog. I as well am an aspiring blog writer but I’m still new to the whole thing.
Do you have any suggestions for newbie blog writers?
I’d definitely appreciate it.
Very descriptive article, I loved that a lot. Will there be a
part 2?
I love what you guys are up too. This sort
of clever work and coverage! Keep up the fantastic works
guys I’ve included you guys to our blogroll.
If some one wishes to be updated with newest technologies afterward he must be pay a
visit this web page and be up to date all the time.
Great goods from you, man. I have understand your stuff previous to and you’re
just extremely great. I really like what you have acquired here,
certainly like what you’re saying and the way in which you say it.
You make it entertaining and you still care for to keep it
wise. I can not wait to read much more from you.
This is actually a terrific website.
bookmarked!!, I love your website!
May I just say what a comfort to find somebody who genuinely knows what they are talking about on the net.
You definitely realize how to bring an issue to light and make
it important. A lot more people have to look at
this and understand this side of your story. I can’t believe you aren’t more popular because you definitely possess the gift.
Hello there, You’ve done a great job. I’ll certainly digg it and personally recommend to my friends.
I’m sure they’ll be benefited from this web site.
I do not know whether it’s just me or if perhaps everybody else experiencing issues with your website.
It looks like some of the written text on your posts are running off the screen. Can somebody else please comment and
let me know if this is happening to them as well?
This might be a issue with my internet browser because I’ve had this happen before.
Many thanks
Howdy! This is my first visit to your blog! We are a group of volunteers and starting a new project
in a community in the same niche. Your blog provided us useful
information to work on. You have done a outstanding job!
I enjoy looking through an article that will make people think. Also, thanks for permitting me to comment!
It is not my first time to visit this site, i am visiting this web site dailly and take pleasant data from here all the time.
What’s up everyone, it’s my first visit at this web site, and piece of writing is truly
fruitful in support of me, keep up posting these types of content.
This speed and ease suggest robust buyer uptake of bank compact loans.
Verify them out and make positive to opt-in if you want to
participate.
It presents 1200+ games with an opportunity to earn lifetime cashback bonuses.
You can fund your casino account applying Visa or Mastercard, with a minimum deposit of $30.
The casinos that let a bonus will restrict the bonus wagering contribution.
My brother suggested I might like this website. He was entirely right.
This post truly made my day. You cann’t imagine simply
how much time I had spent for this information! Thanks!
Hello! I’m at work browsing your blog from my new iphone!
Just wanted to say I love reading through your blog and look forward to all your posts!
Carry on the fantastic work!
Hi, i feel that i saw you visited my weblog thus i got here
to go back the prefer?.I’m trying to find issues to improve my site!I
guess its adequate to use a few of your ideas!!
Nice weblog here! Also your web site so much up very fast! What web host are you the use of? Can I get your affiliate link on your host? I desire my website loaded up as quickly as yours lol my web page: Depi.lt
Hi, I do believe this is a great web site. I stumbledupon it ;
) I am going to revisit once again since i have saved as a
favorite it. Money and freedom is the best way to change, may you be rich and
continue to guide other people.
Howdy! This post could not be written any better!
Going through this post reminds me of my previous roommate!
He always kept preaching about this. I’ll send this article to him.
Pretty sure he’s going to have a good read. I appreciate you for
sharing!
Nice weblog here! A big thank you for your blog article. Want more
After examining several blog posts on your site, I really like your approach to blogging. Added to my bookmarks, and I’ll revisit shortly. Visit my website and tell me what you think.
Having explored several blog posts on your website, I genuinely like your blogging technique. It’s in my bookmarked list now, and I’ll be checking back soon. Check out my website and share your opinions.
After exploring some of your blog posts, I truly appreciate your unique blogging style. It’s now bookmarked, and I’ll be back soon. Explore my site and share your thoughts.
I consider this a genuinely great blog. Really looking forward to more reads. Truly excellent.
I really like how your blog presents these topics. Thanks for this post, and I can’t wait to read your next one.
Read more. Looking forward to reading more. Great blog. Really.
This is a truly excellent blog. Really looking forward to more reads. Absolutely fantastic.
After looking into some of your blog posts, I genuinely like your blogging technique. It’s in my bookmarked list now, and I’ll be checking back soon. Explore my site and let me know your thoughts.
I really liked your blog article.Much thanks again. Awesome.
Way cool! Some very valid points! I appreciate you writing this write-up and also the rest of the site is really good.
Hello, great website you’ve gotten at this time there. [url=http://www.gumgang.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=free&wr_id=31411]serta snel verzonden[/url]
like
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful post with us.
Nice i really enjoyed reading your blogs. Keep on posting. Thanks
I am so grateful for your blog post.Really thank you! Really Cool.
Thanks so much for the blog post.Much thanks again. Want more.
wow, awesome blog. Fantastic.
Thanks for your posting. What I want to say is that while looking for a good on-line electronics go shopping, look for a website with total information on critical indicators such as the personal privacy statement, protection details, payment procedures, along with other terms plus policies. Generally take time to look into the help along with FAQ sections to get a greater idea of what sort of shop is effective, what they are capable of doing for you, and just how you can take full advantage of the features.
Thank you sharing most of these wonderful content. In addition, the perfect travel along with medical insurance program can often reduce those issues that come with traveling abroad. Your medical crisis can in the near future become too expensive and that’s absolute to quickly set a financial problem on the family’s finances. Putting in place the best travel insurance package prior to leaving is definitely worth the time and effort. Thank you
Thank you, I’ve just been looking for info approximately this topic for ages and yours is the best I have found out so far. However, what about the bottom line? Are you certain in regards to the supply?
Hi my family member! I want to say that this article is amazing, great written and come with approximately all important infos. I would like to see extra posts like this .
I am extremely inspired with your writing skills as neatly as with the format to your weblog. Is this a paid subject or did you modify it yourself? Anyway keep up the excellent quality writing, it?s rare to peer a nice weblog like this one these days..
Hello! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow you if that would be ok. I’m absolutely enjoying your blog and look forward to new updates.
whoah this blog is great i love reading your posts. Keep up the good work! You know, lots of people are searching around for this information, you can help them greatly.
A person essentially help to make seriously articles I would state. This is the first time I frequented your web page and thus far? I amazed with the research you made to make this particular publish amazing. Wonderful job!
hello there and thank you in your information ? I have certainly picked up anything new from right here. I did then again experience some technical issues the usage of this website, as I experienced to reload the site a lot of times previous to I could get it to load correctly. I were thinking about if your hosting is OK? Now not that I’m complaining, however slow loading instances instances will often have an effect on your placement in google and could injury your quality rating if advertising and ***********|advertising|advertising|advertising and *********** with Adwords. Well I am adding this RSS to my email and can look out for much extra of your respective fascinating content. Make sure you update this once more soon..
certainly like your website however you have to check the spelling on quite a few of your posts. Several of them are rife with spelling problems and I to find it very troublesome to tell the reality then again I?ll certainly come back again.
I’ve been absent for some time, but now I remember why I used to love this site. Thanks , I?ll try and check back more frequently. How frequently you update your site?
Thanks for the auspicious writeup. It in fact used to be a amusement account it. Look complicated to more introduced agreeable from you! However, how can we communicate?
It is appropriate time to make some plans for the future and it is time to be happy. I’ve read this post and if I could I wish to suggest you few interesting things or suggestions. Maybe you can write next articles referring to this article. I want to read more things about it!
A few things i have observed in terms of laptop memory is always that there are features such as SDRAM, DDR and many others, that must go with the requirements of the mother board. If the personal computer’s motherboard is pretty current while there are no operating system issues, updating the memory literally takes under an hour. It’s one of several easiest personal computer upgrade processes one can think about. Thanks for expressing your ideas.
I’m truly enjoying the design and layout of your blog. It’s a very easy on the eyes which makes it much more pleasant for me to come here and visit more often. Did you hire out a developer to create your theme? Fantastic work!
Wow, wonderful blog layout! How long have you ever been running a blog for?
you make blogging look easy. The overall glance of your website is fantastic, as neatly as the content!
You can see similar here dobry sklep
Thanks for your posting. One other thing is when you are advertising your property all on your own, one of the problems you need to be conscious of upfront is just how to deal with household inspection records. As a FSBO home owner, the key concerning successfully shifting your property as well as saving money in real estate agent profits is awareness. The more you realize, the easier your property sales effort will likely be. One area where this is particularly important is information about home inspections.
I like the helpful info you provide in your articles. I?ll bookmark your weblog and take a look at once more right here frequently. I am reasonably certain I?ll learn a lot of new stuff right right here! Good luck for the following!
Howdy! I’m at work browsing your blog from my new iphone 4! Just wanted to say I love reading your blog and look forward to all your posts! Carry on the superb work!
hi!,I like your writing so much! share we communicate more about your post on AOL? I require a specialist on this area to solve my problem. Maybe that’s you! Looking forward to see you.