The Afronauts

Ryan Calais Cameron looks set to further gild his reputation as Black British theatre’s brightest and most versatile commercial prospect with his latest play The Afronauts, which offers a look at a fascinating and – in the West at least – little remembered chapter in the Space Race of the 1960s. That is, Zambia’s contribution, wherein the modestly-sized southern African country nominally duelled the US and USSR to be the first to land a man on the moon. This quixotic endeavour wasn’t a state initiatuive but rather that of private citizen Edward Nkoloso, a school teacher, freedom fighter and local legend. Was it a serious endeavour? Or a sort of satirical prank? History seems divided on the matter, but you can be Cameron will get into it in this follow-up to his West End smashes For Black Boys… and Retrograde. In a tremendous piece of casting the great Lucian Msamati will play Edward.