Ryan Calais Cameron's The Afronauts runs at the Royal Court from Saturday 14 November to Saturday 19 December 2026.
In 1960 Edward Makuka Nkoloso, a schoolteacher and veteran of the independence movement, founded the Zambia National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy. He trained a dozen cadets, one of them a sixteen-year-old girl called Matha Mwamba, by rolling them down hills in oil drums and swinging them from ropes. He intended to put them on the moon, and then Mars, before the Americans or the Soviets, and he applied to UNESCO for seven million pounds. The launch was planned for Independence Day, 24 October 1964, from the Independence Stadium in Lusaka. Permission was refused.
The story is usually told as a joke. Ryan Calais Cameron, who wrote For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide, is not telling it that way: a newly independent country announcing that it intends to go to the moon is a statement about what independence is for, and the laughter is the point being made about who is allowed ambition. For Black Boys transferred to the West End on the strength of six actors and almost no set, which is the most reliable indicator available of what Cameron can do with an ensemble and an empty stage.
He co-directs with Monique Touko at the Royal Court from Saturday 14 November to Saturday 19 December 2026, five weeks carrying the theatre to the Saturday before Christmas.