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The Zambian show has been in the pipeline for almost a decade
A Zambian theatre company which has spent almost a decade trying to bring its story of the country’s space race attempt to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is in a wrangle with a major London theatre after it launched a show about the same topic with the same name.
Circus Zambia is to perform Afronauts at this year’s Fringe, which tells the compelling tale of the 1964 drive to send a Zambian rocket – containing two cats as well as an astronaut – into space, after the African theatre group’s previous attempt to attend the festival in 2020 was scrapped due to Covid.
Since then, they have toured the show in Zambia and at a major arts festival in South Africa, but have only just been able to gather the resources to finally travel to Scotland.
Now, the Royal Court Theatre in London’s Sloane Square has announced a play of the same story, called The Afronauts, which will be performed as part of its upcoming season.
Some audience members are believed to have already booked tickets for the wrong show.
Despite contacting the theatre to ask if they would consider using a different title, or collaborating with the Zambian group to highlight the iconic story of the would-be astronauts, the London production of The Afronauts is going ahead in November.
Adam McGuigan, co-founder of Wake the Beast theatre, who has written and directed the Zambian show with Circus Zambia head Gift Chansa, said he had first heard about the Royal Court’s production when he received a message from a friend who had booked tickets for the wrong production.
Mr McGuigan, who lived in Zambia for ten years where he ran a theatre organisation for young people, said: “We’ve been talking about doing Afronauts for years. Then I started getting messages from people saying ‘Oh my God, you guys are at the Royal Court, how exciting!’.
“We just couldn’t believe it. What are the chances that this story we’ve been working on for years had been picked up? It was such a Zambian story, which it’s been amazing to tell with a fully Zambian team.
He added: “I’ve had people telling me they’ve booked tickets for the [Royal Court] show in November, thinking it was ours. Even the visuals have a lot of similarities.”
The group contacted David Byrne, artistic director at the Royal Court.
Mr McGuigan said: “We asked if there was any chance they would consider changing the name because there was some confusion, but they were unable to do that.
“It was extremely disappointing and it does feel like a David and Goliath story, because of the mammoth amount of work we’ve had to do to get this off the ground. We’re a small African country and it didn’t feel like they took us that seriously.”
The 1964 bid to send Zambians to space was pioneered by Edward Makuka Nkoloso, a member of the Zambian resistance movement and the founder of the Zambia National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy. Previously known as Northern Rhodesia, the nation gained independence from Britain to become Zambia in October the same year.
Mr Nkoloso planned to launch a rocket that would send his 17-year-old student and two cats into space, training his astronauts by rolling them down a hill in steel drums to simulate weightlessness.
Mr McGuigan said: “We’ve decided to see it as an opportunity for Zambia, because how often does a Zambian story get this profile?
“This story of the Afronauts is a really powerful story about Zambia making a stand and having this incredible aspiration and dream.”
He added: “I think it would feel worse if we weren’t getting to tell it ourselves first, in Edinburgh and we’re just going to focus on making it the most beautiful and powerful show we can.”
The Zambian group’s show begins with a BBC news report from 1964, where the reporter shows footage of the astronaut’s training near the Zambian capital, Lusaka.
“We have a youthful group of budding astronauts playing at entering Zambia for the world space race. But for most Zambians, these people are a bunch of crackpots,” the reporter says. “And from what I’ve seen today, I am inclined to agree.”
“It’s so patronising, it’s so sneery,” said Mr McGuigan. “We start the show with that. The story is mischievous and it is playful and he was a real dreamer, but at its core, there’s real substance behind the story. And the fact that he had that dream and that belief has inspired generations of young people.
“Zambia had just got independence and it was a time when people were defining them selves and without the shackles of colonialism, it was possible to dream and aspire. So there’s a real politics behind that aspiration as well.”
Circus Zambia has met Nkoloso’s family, including his son and included his memories in the performance.
Mr Chansa said the story was iconic for young Zambians.
He said: “I’ve known this story since I was young. In Zambia, it is a story that is full of aspiration for young people, but also it was a huge part of the fight for independence in Zambia. It has many layers.”
The story of the theatre group’s tour to Edinburgh is to be followed in a documentary by Zambian filmmaker Ngosa Chungu. It is hoped the documentary will later be screened in film festivals around the world.
“The documentary will allow us to see how outsiders interpret a very Zambian story like that,” says Ms Chungu. “That will be interesting.”
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Written by award-winning playwright Ryan Calais Cameron, the Royal Court version of The Afronauts is billed as “The true(ish) story of the Zambian space programme, and a nation’s defiant dream to reach for the stars”.
Afronauts will be performed at Udderbelly in George Square during the Fringe.
A spokesperson for The Royal Court, which has produced plays starring actors including Miriam Margolyes, Gary Oldman, and Tilda Swinton, said: “We were grateful to Circus Zambia for alerting us to their production ‘Afronauts’, which neither we nor the writer were aware of when we announced our production of ‘The Afronauts’, which explores the same famous historical events through a different theatrical form.
“We immediately responded to their initial email in October last year, in which we offered to work together and ensure that our shows complement each other. We wish their production all the best.”
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