00:53:39.400The fascination with the mission continues later this year
00:53:41.640as writer Ryan Callas Cameron teams up with director Monique Tuoco
00:53:45.580to deliver a true-ish take on the nation's defiant dream.
00:53:50.380Their production, The Afronauts, has its UK premiere
00:53:54.040at West London's Royal Court in November.
00:53:58.640So it didn't happen. It was just a joke. People at the time didn't believe.
00:54:10.000But now they're going to make people at London's Royal Court go and see a theater about the thing that never, the ridiculed thing that never happened.0.97
00:54:24.140exactly this is so fucking retarded that's right thank you jordy all those works uses0.96
00:54:35.240nicolas vision of space exploration and uh let me pull this up on the side here uh all those works0.96
00:54:42.300using the closest visions of space exploration as a way to imagine beyond traditional western
00:54:49.200conceptions i mean you can you can you can imagine like all you want that you know we we was and she
00:54:58.480and atlantis is real and merkaba energy is going to get you there that's a fight i mean you can
00:55:04.380imagine imagine it all day long that's fine but that doesn't make it real it doesn't mean
00:55:09.500that uh that it's actually going to happen all right okay it's just you actually need
00:55:16.680you need physics you actually need physics and material and math this is not something like
00:55:24.640george lopez lopez skit here but like we we don't need new blueprints you know when they
00:55:30.500make fun of like uh you know uh jeremy and mike standing with the uh surveying tools like can you
00:55:38.740move a skosh we don't need we don't need we don't yeah have you seen some of the recent mexican
00:55:44.340builds all these like there's like million dollar houses going up now it's just leaks everywhere0.95
00:55:49.480and weird shit and they have they don't put anything in the right place and there's cracks
00:55:53.700and seams and leakage and anyway let's not do uh let's not do that one okay let's let's proceed0.50
00:55:58.580here let's finish off the mbeki mbolo mkaki story here of the zamb the brave zambian space program
00:56:06.300wakalantis yeah we can can come up with various various terms for this here ladies and gentlemen
00:56:13.300Well, there's been considerable critique from the outside.
00:56:22.340They used Nicolos' visions of space exploration as a way to imagine
00:56:27.220beyond traditional Western conceptions of what the future could look like,
00:56:33.020repositioning black Africans as leaders and trailblazers.
00:56:38.300In many ways, Nucoloso was an early, though perhaps largely forgotten, pioneer of Afrofuturism,
00:56:47.400a coined term in the 90s by cultural critic Mark Derry.
00:56:51.800I think we did a segment on Afrofuturism once.
00:56:56.660While there's been considerable attention from outside the country,
00:57:00.920it's clear that these historic events mean a great deal to Zambians too.
00:57:04.940This month, Circus Zambia, a Lucasa-based social enterprise that offers circus and life skills training to young people from marginalized backgrounds,
00:57:15.440brings its show Afronauts to the underbelly at Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
00:57:24.720Again, why can't you do this in Lusaka?
00:57:30.980The theater and the play, notice they're all going to Western.
00:57:33.860Edinburgh or London, the Royal Theatre and the Edinburgh Festival, Fringe.
00:57:42.020The production is a collaboration with UK-based theatre company Wake the Beast,
00:57:47.460co-founded by the Irish theatre maker Adam McGowan,
00:57:53.340and combines aerials, juggling, and partner aerobatics
00:57:58.140to share this epic piece of African history.
00:58:01.000holy shit that's right everybody hmm the partnership between the two companies goes0.93
00:58:08.980back many years mcguyen who previously lived in zambia for a decade still regularly works within0.97
00:58:15.100the country's theater industry also co-founded bare feet theater cultural movement that seeks
00:58:21.580to empower vulnerable children living on the streets of lusaka through theater workshops in
00:58:28.180the west paid for by westerners presumably but okay it was through this program that he met
00:58:34.020a young gift chance gift chance gift me a chance master who would go from service user to
00:58:44.020facilitator at bare feet and eventually go on to co-create circus zambia
00:58:51.780the two of them co-directed the underbelly production which also appeared at the uk's
00:58:55.780wilderness and latitude festivals in july see if you kind of just
00:58:59.860shit's happening it's like this here's look here's this play and here's this
00:59:03.220theater and here's this kind of group that's helping things it's0.91
00:59:07.780there's buzz around the space program in zambia
00:59:10.820sounds like child trafficking yeah i mean exactly it's
00:59:14.180highly likely we started working on the show in 2019
00:59:19.060and we're planning to bring it to edinburgh that
00:59:21.780that year then covid came ah what a shame chance that tells me over zoom during a break from
00:59:29.220rehearsal last month before that most of its shows were adaptations of well-known western
00:59:34.340works such as west side story the emperor's new clothes uh but it's adaptation stuff you