Travel Beyond Stars: Trauma and Future in Mojisola Adebayo’s STARS

Renzo Baas

doi:10.1515/jcde-2021-0007

Article

Travel Beyond Stars: Trauma and Future in Mojisola Adebayo’s STARS

Renzo Baas
is a research assistant at Ruhr-University Bochum. His academic interests include colonial and postcolonial literatures, speculative fictions, graphic novels, and comic books. His doctoral thesis, published in 2019, deals with spatial production in Namibia throughout its colonial, apartheid, and liberation eras. He has published articles on hauntology, German colonial literature, and postcolonial Namibia.

Published/Copyright: May 19, 2021

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From the journal Journal of Contemporary Drama in English Volume 9 Issue 1

Abstract

The article explores Mojisola Adebayo’s two-hander STARS (preliminary workshop performance, Ovalhouse, 2018) through the lens of Afrofuturism. The play will be discussed in regard to future-making technologies. By analysing the overt as well as subtle references to science fiction and its tropes, this article lays out how Afrofuturism informs the play and how it is formative in liberating the main character. Furthermore, questions of violence against women, forms of resistance, and the function of the imagination will be examined. Adebayo deftly weaves Afrofuturist concerns into the everyday experiences of marginalised groups who face discrimination and exclusion, irrespective of whether their marginalisation is based on culture, gender, or age. Through this, the play offers ways of dealing with bodily and historical trauma and exclusion, while simultaneously addressing violent and harmful practices and power relations. The play may be set in the present and deals with current issues, but its performance of the future – in regard to resistance and liberation – proves to be its central feature.

Keywords: Afrofuturism; Mojisola Adebayo; STARS; science fiction

About the author

Renzo Baas

is a research assistant at Ruhr-University Bochum. His academic interests include colonial and postcolonial literatures, speculative fictions, graphic novels, and comic books. His doctoral thesis, published in 2019, deals with spatial production in Namibia throughout its colonial, apartheid, and liberation eras. He has published articles on hauntology, German colonial literature, and postcolonial Namibia.

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Published Online: 2021-05-19

Published in Print: 2021-05-06

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0007

Keywords for this article

Afrofuturism; Mojisola Adebayo; STARS; science fiction