Stars: An Afrofuturist Space Odyssey by Mojisola Adebayo (review)

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• Stars: An Afrofuturist Space Odyssey by Mojisola Adebayo
• Isabel Stuart

STARS: AN AFROFUTURIST SPACE ODYSSEY. By Mojisola Adebayo. Directed by Gail Babb and S. Ama Wray. Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. May 3, 2023.

STARS, a play by Mojisola Adebayo, centers around an older Black woman, Mrs, who has spent her life searching the universe for an orgasm. Her neglectful husband, Mr, who never even briefly considered Mrs’s pleasure, has died, opening new possibilities for Mrs to live her life without the patriarchal limitations placed on her by Mr’s presence. The Black feminist politics of STARS is deeply connected to finding hope and joy both in the everyday and in far-reaching imaginations of other galaxies before and beyond our current world. This combination of domesticity and otherworldliness, where pleasure is both tied to the present and flying off into the future, underlies the political efficac of Adebayo’s ambitious exploration of Black feminist and queer joy in STARS.

Creating an atmosphere—or, perhaps more accurately, a “vibe”—of enjoyment and pleasure was integral to the politics of STARS even before the performance began. As the audience entered the performance space, we could choose from either sitting in standard theatre seats near the back or lying down on beanbags near the front of the stage, as if gazing up at a starry night, situating the audience within the astronautical world of the production. [End Page 112] The raked circular stage was illuminated by a ring of light, as if the stage were a faraway planet that Mrs was exploring. Atop this planet-like stage was a homely scene made up of a table and chair and a fridge, which, once spun around, turned into a washing machine. This set design (by Miriam Nabarro) combined the domestic with the intergalactic, highlighting the sense of discovery and wonder that can be found in the everyday while also suggesting a home that is emotionally off-balance

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Debra Michaels (Mrs) in STARS: An Afrofuturist Space Odyssey. (Photo: Ali Wright; courtesy of Tamasha.)

As the audience entered, there was a live DJ to the left of the stage playing a mix of house music and techno, creating an atmosphere reminiscent of a 1990s nightclub. Following this theme, on two nights of the run, STARS transformed from a play into a celebratory club right after the show had finished, featuring multiple DJs, dancing, and popup performances from characters in the show. This experimentation with and expansion of the theatrical form produced a multimedia experience that spanned artforms and generations, from African folklore and mythology to the unimagined realms of outer space. Both the production itself and the atmosphere surrounding it created an Afrofuturist vision that was unapologetically queer and feminist.

Despite pleasure and enjoyment being key to how STARS was produced and received, the production was also fie cely political and not without heartbreak. Mrs’s determination to experience female pleasure was marked by her own struggles as a working-class Black woman in her sixties who is finally free from her abusive husband and by the struggles of the people she encountered on her journey. STARS was predominantly a one-woman show (aside from the live DJ, Bradley Charles, who also played Mrs’s largely absent son); Debra Michaels performed Mrs as well as all other characters in the play.

A key character was Maryam, a young Muslim girl who knocked on Mrs’s door and asked to use her toilet. After this initial encounter, Maryam and Mrs became friends, as Maryam kept returning to her house to use the toilet and work on her school project about outer space. Like Mrs, Maryam was fascinated by worlds beyond her own. Their imaginative conversations about extraterrestrial exploration were supported by animations projected on a screen behind the stage, which aimed to capture both Mrs’s and Maryam’s expansive visions of other worlds. These animations were accompanied by creative captions, which acted as an accessibility tool while showcasing Adebayo’s lyrical and poetic script. [End Page 113]

As Maryam shared more about her life, Mrs discovered that she had undergone genital mutilation. The two characters...