Life Out There at Lowry

The crew of this barely-functional spacecraft were never the first choice. The proper scientists are back on Earth doing the real work. Drifting far beyond Earth on a deep space mission, Clarke just wants to get home; Baby won’t leave the ship; Witney is keeping their distance from their mother. None of them are really cut out for it, yet when something goes wrong in the silence of space, they’re the ones faced with a choice – not just about survival, but about what kind of future is worth chasing across the galaxy.

It’s a strong comic premise for this sci-fi drama by playwright Tim Foley and Ransack Theatre. Their previous show together, Jurassic, was described by the Guardian as “a dotty delight and a searing indictment of the way our world is going” – funny, before the rug’s pulled. Life Out There looks to work the same way: sharp and comic on the surface, quietly horrifying underneath.

Beyond the comedy of the rogue astronauts, the ethics of space exploration and human selfishness are called into play. At a moment when humanity’s future in space has started to look like one man’s vanity project, these are questions being genuinely contested outside of fiction. And running through all of it: the fragile hope that we can still change.

Piers Black, who trained on the National Theatre Directors’ Course and was Resident Director at the Almeida, directs. Foley won the Bruntwood Prize Judges’ Award for Electric Rosary, which premiered at the Royal Exchange in 2022. The production has been developed with support from the National Theatre’s Generate programme, the Lowry’s Artist Development Programme, and Arts Council England.

It premieres at the Lowry’s Aldridge Studio before moving to the Engine Room in Wigan and, for one night, to Jodrell Bank Observatory – where, quite ingeniously, it becomes a live radio drama performed beneath star projections in the Space Dome.