The Afronauts is a bold and imaginative play by Ryan Calais Cameron, inspired by the little-known story of Zambia’s attempt to join the 1960s space race. Set in 1964, as the country celebrates independence, the play follows Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, a schoolteacher with an audacious vision: to train a small group of young recruits to become Africa’s first astronauts and send them into space. His improvised “space academy” becomes a place where national pride, personal ambition and sheer, stubborn hope collide.
At its heart, The Afronauts is a story about dreaming beyond the limits the world places on you. Nkoloso’s ramshackle training programme – complete with homemade equipment and improvised drills – is frequently funny and sometimes absurd, but it is never treated as a joke at his expense. Instead, the play asks what it means for a newly independent African nation to imagine itself at the forefront of science and exploration, even as the global powers dismiss its dreams as naive. The recruits who join Nkoloso carry their own hopes and anxieties, bringing into focus questions of identity, opportunity and the right to aspire to something extraordinary.
Ryan Calais Cameron’s writing blends humour with emotional depth and political sharpness. He uses the Afronauts’ outlandish mission to probe more grounded issues: the legacy of colonialism, the pressures of nation-building and the everyday realities of people trying to define their own future. Moments of comedy sit alongside moments of poignancy, and the play constantly shifts between the intimate – friendships, rivalries, family ties – and the symbolic, as the mission comes to represent the possibility of an entirely different African story being told.
On stage, The Afronauts invites a vivid, theatrical language. Training sequences become ritual-like, combining movement, rhythm and ensemble work to communicate both the seriousness and playfulness of the project. The simple objects of the space academy – barrels, ropes, makeshift helmets and contraptions – take on a poetic quality, standing in for the ingenuity and resourcefulness of people determined to push against the constraints around them. The design evokes both the heat and dust of the Zambian landscape and the vast, imaginative space beyond the Earth that the characters yearn to reach.
Although rooted in a specific moment in African history, the play resonates strongly with contemporary audiences. Its focus on who gets to dream big, whose stories are recorded and whose ambitions are taken seriously feels sharply relevant. The Afronauts reframes a marginalised episode as a celebration of vision, courage and the refusal to accept second place in the global imagination.
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The Afronauts
The Afronauts is a bold and imaginative play by Ryan Calais Cameron, inspired by the little-known story of…