Just before lift-off, I’m asked if I’ve ever done anything like this before. Following a nervous shake of my head, the news is broken that it “might feel quite unnatural”, but that we would be taking it slow. “Are you ready?” aerial director Gwen Hales asks. Soon I can feel empty space beneath my feet. Even though I am not afraid of heights, I’m suddenly very aware that I am dangling mid-air. This flying lesson feels more secure than I’d imagined but my heart still starts to beat faster. “A lot of people do have a very physical reaction, a bit like a panic attack, when they are taken up,” says Hales. We are at the rehearsal studios for an adaptation of CS Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which has just started a tour of the UK. The show was first staged at Leeds Playhouse in 2017 and transferred to the Bridge theatre in London in 2019. Hales was originally a circus performer: for 20 years she specialised as an aerialist, and then began directing when her body “started to crumble”. I’m attached to a harness that is tightened around my hips, that works by being clipped on to two metal wires connected to an electrical system. The instructions given are to let the machinery take me into the air. “Try not to fight it,” Hales says. But even with the mechanics pulling me upwards, my immediate reaction is to resist and stay on the ground. To fly, you need strong core muscles. “Anyone can be lifted, but doing choreography needs physical strength,” explains Hales. Before rehearsals start, she sends actors a training plan, mainly involving exercises such as planks. “If they haven’t done them, you can really tell,” she says. And my own lack of preparation makes following some of her directions difficult – such as lying flat. When performing aerially, the ability to stay horizontal is vital. “You don’t see a lot of people flying upright, so we have to do a lot of work to get it right,” says Hales. From a standing position, she instructs me to tip myself so I’m downwards facing. I’m told to stretch out my arms and balance myself while working hard to remain level. “You won’t fall out of the harness,” she says. But, as I wobble and slip just a little bit too far forward, I can’t help but worry. For Robyn Sinclair, the actor playing Susan, it is her first time properly flying on stage. Though she describes the feeling as a “fizzy excitement”, she tells me she initially felt nervous when she was lifted high up. “It was frightening. I don’t think I’m a natural. It takes me a long time to get used to being at a particular height. But once you do, it is a very powerful feeling.” As Susan, Sinclair only flies once in the show, in a scene when Aslan takes her and her sister Lucy on a journey through the skies of Narnia, but it is a moment she looks forward to performing. “I’m playing a human character, so luckily, I get to act shocked, which makes it easier!” Flying is one of the tools used in this production to evoke the Narnia universe, in addition to puppetry and live music. The tour is directed by Michael Fentiman, based on the original production by Sally Cookson, with set and costumes designed by Rae Smith. Fantasy is the reason we return to the tale again and again, says Samantha Womack, the former EastEnders actor who is playing the White Witch. “The narrative makes your imagination soar,” she says. “Even as adults, people need to experience magic.” Womack argues that Lewis’s story has taken on an even greater relevance during the pandemic. “The last year has been heavy. People have lost their sense of self and have struggled to understand what it means to have their freedom taken away,” she says. “This story is all about what matters [in life]. It’s a good time to escape the real world for a bit – and the flying adds excitement.” My time in the air was, unexpectedly, very moving. Hales tells me this feeling is something she hopes the audience will share. “I like to believe we’re physically connected to the people we watch on stage, so when we see them lifted, our bodies understand the sensation.” Theatrical flight demands that we suspend our belief in reality for a while, and, as I’m lowered on to the ground for the final time, I’m reluctant to say goodbye to my spell in the sky. “How did it feel?” Hales asks. “Superhuman,” I reply.