GO/NO GO

There is a wonderful connection underlying this piece. Circus performers are always testing the limits of human endurance and capability and so too were the first astronauts, especially the first woman.

This company has woven the background stories of these women, together with the performers’ astonishing circus skills to capture the women’s heroic attempt to be included on the Mercury 7 flight. The performance explored the attitudes and social mores which blocked the woman’s path to the stars and was structured around the testing the astronauts underwent. Quotes from contemporaneous documents and songs laid bare the sexism of the organisations involved.

The performers include Sophie Bohlsen, Robyn Glowacki, Rindi Harradine, Cassia Jamieson, Lucy Knight, Grace Law, Emily Loe, Amy Nightingale-Olsen, and Nina Robertson. They are all very much at home and in control of their equipment or style of performance and the audience was often moved to gasp and clap. The performances subtly linked to the efforts of the woman trainees.

Disappointingly, some of the verbal delivery was too quick or soft to understand; perhaps as a result of the amount of breath needed for the physical efforts.

This performance richly evoked the debt owed to trailblazers. These women’s stories are to be treasured and lifted up for all of us to benefit from the call to do and be more than the currently possible.

Ruth Richter