Before she became the first woman of colour to go into space, Mae Jemison trained as a dancer. When she embarked on her 1992 mission on the shuttle Endeavour, she took with her an inspirational photograph of Alvin Ailey’s ballet Cry performed by her near namesake, Judith Jamison. So it is fitting that Reach for the Stars, an online physical theatre show for children, puts choreography at its heart as it entwines the trailblazing African American astronaut’s story with that of an aspiring space-rocketeer, Nat.
Yasmin Keita gives a warm, spirited performance using dance and rap routines to explore science, Jemison’s story and the importance of representation. Jemison drew inspiration from seeing Nichelle Nichols play Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek.
I watch with seven-year-old Hilda, whose interest in outer space has rocketed from Meg and Mog’s moon adventure to Tintin’s cosmic voyage and, earlier this year, Roustabout Theatre’s madcap Luna. I never learned about Jemison at school but Hilda already has. “She made big changes to the world,” she tells me excitedly.
When Jemison herself was seven, the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, but in America all the buzz was about Aldrin and Armstrong. The spacemen on the news didn’t look like Jemison, but as she says in one of the powerful audio clips used in the show: “Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination.”
Amanda Wright’s engaging digital production for the Little Angel puppet theatre bookends a pre-recorded version of the 30-minute show with a bit of live crowd work on Zoom. Keita greets the young audience and gets them ready for blast off and invites us to return later for some postshow activities. It’s a low-key but effective way of recreating the way audiences are warmly welcomed at the Islington venue, where productions sometimes end with children encouraged towards the stage to meet the puppets.
The show is designed for children aged 6-11 but feels more suited to children at the lower end of that range. Reach for the Stars has been filmed in a dark, uncluttered studio where Keita – playing the grownup Nat – leafs through a pop-up book charting her childhood passion for the solar system. The show deftly balances the adult achievements of its fictional and real heroines with their youthful aspirations.
Surprisingly for a Little Angel production, the puppets are thin on the ground until an angry-faced envelope arrives to bring Nat the news that her space-camp application has been rejected. In a nice touch from designer Ellie Mills, the table beneath the pop-up book itself transforms, with flaps unfolded to turn it into a rocket. If the Nat puppet’s mission feels a bit underwhelming – in the theatre you imagine she would be brought out among the crowd – it doesn’t matter with a host as exuberant as Keita. We are encouraged to feel space travel in all its thrilling freedom, as well as its anxieties.
Hilda loves the rapping and music by Zara Nunn and she goes goggle-eyed at Nat’s jetpack, which has a nice DIY design including bottles as blasters. Maybe we’ll get some tips on how to make it in the workshop, she wonders. Instead, the postshow games involve posing as freeze-frames of our favourite scenes from the story. As the kids are asked to shout out, and believe in, their own dreams, we’re encouraged that staring into space may very well lead you there.
This is a digital production geared towards responding to a story rather than helping to tell it, as Nottingham Playhouse’s Zoom show Noah and the Peacock did. If the activities feel a little thin, and are again geared more towards younger children, they neatly mirror the physicality of the production itself. And the day after we watch the show, an email from the theatre arrives with an experiment for viewers to recreate a meteor impact, as rapped about by Nat. Our messy mission requires flour, cocoa and marbles. To the kitchen, space cadets!
