The audience enter the lobby of the Rhodes (the University Currently Known as Rhodes) Main Theatre, the bright and functional overhead lights giving nothing away. They have come to see Astronautus Afrikanus. A small desk marks the makeshift box-office station outside the glass double doors at which they receive nametags. They might rightly suspect at this point that the performance will not take the usual form accommodated by this theatre. Each audience member is renamed with the prefix Afro, such as Afroholic, Afrobeat, Afromystic. Yet, unknown to them, these names serve to make easier work of a head count in the event of an emergency evacuation. It is May 2015 in Grahamstown, and Eskom has taken to regular unplanned electricity outages, in addition to its regular planned blackouts. The Rhodes Must Fall student protests are also gaining momentum. Fela Kuti plays in the lobby, perhaps only noticeable to those not engaged in conversation about their nametags, wondering out loud what form the invitation to join the characters listed in the programme will take. These characters are similarly named – AfroMogolo, AfroCyann, AfroTiptap, AfroGeo, and so on. The music of Kuti ensures that the ambience is upbeat but suggests, too, that the events to come are cognisant of the rising temperatures of the student movement.

The doors close and some members of the audience register that the music has stopped and that characters in grey overalls with individualised chitenge detail have assembled at the top of each set of stairs leading from the ground floor of the large lobby to the upper entrance of the Rhodes Main Theatre. The following automated security briefing is announced: