Stars: An Afrofuturist Space Odyssey
18 April – 4 May 2023
The ICA
A Tamasha and ICA co-production, STARS is a sensitive and joyful show about desire, touch and reclaiming your pleasure.
The Vavengers were invited to host a sexual trauma workshop at the ICA. The workshop brought together survivors and theatre practitioners through wellness and conversation - connecting the play to the types of stories that informed it.
The session acted a safe space for women to share their stories, meet other survivors, and benefit from a series of wellness practices. It also introduced more survivors to our work - informing them of the type of support that is available to them.
The workshop was also essential to the production of STARS, ensuring that the play was accurate and trauma-informed, especially since the play explored a characters’ experience as an FGM/C survivor.
The Vavengers CEO Sema Gornall and Co-Founder Hoda Ali also provided their expertise as professionals and survivors respectively, on the premier night of the play.
“A new Afrofuturist music play about pleasure, desire and female orgasms.”
The 90-minute production includes a young girl faced with FGM/C, battling with the role her mother plays in it, and an Intersex woman who experiences incredible sexual pleasure as a result of her unique body.
“STARS is a hilarious and moving mix of celebratory Black queer empowerment and arousal. Performed by one woman and a live DJ, with projected animations, we join in an old woman’s search for her lost orgasm, spanning across outer space, with dustings of African mythology and folklore in an unabashedly queer, feminist rallying call.
A ‘concept album on stage’, the experimental and expansive STARS is written by internationally acclaimed theatremaker, artist and Alfred Fagon award-winner Mojisola Adebayo.”