Crown of Blood: Power, Consequence and African Cosmology on the British Stage
As part of African Voices Platform’s editorial coverage of Crown of Blood, this article draws on conversations with the creative team and cast recorded during the rehearsal period. It explores how the production engages African cosmology to examine power, destiny and consequence on the British stage.
Power, prophecy and consequence are not abstract ideas in African cosmologies. They are inherited and communal, shaped through lived experience. When order is broken, the rupture is not only personal. It carries spiritual, social and generational weight. Crown of Blood enters this lineage deliberately.
Presented by Utopia Theatre, the production draws on Macbeth as raw material. What emerges is not an attempt to “Africanise” a European classic, instead, it’s African-led work that uses Yoruba cosmology and contemporary African Theatre practice to examine power, ambition and moral consequence.
AVP interview with actors Deyemi Okanlawon and Kehinde Bankole
In this framing, destiny is never individual. Authority is never neutral. Violence, whether physical, spiritual or political, leaves a residue that cannot be ignored. Crown of Blood chooses to sit with these realities rather than move quickly past them.
As Crown of Blood prepares to meet audiences in Sheffield and later Coventry, these questions feel particularly charged. They are posed as as lived reflection. The production arrives at a moment when conversations about leadership, inheritance and accountability feel increasingly pressing, both locally and globally.
What distinguishes this work is its refusal to treat African knowledge systems as surface detail. Yoruba cosmology functions here as structure, shaping how power moves, how prophecy is understood, and how the natural and spiritual worlds remain connected. The central question is not simply who takes power, but what follows when the moral order that sustains a community is broken.
Rehearsal-room conversations suggest a cast and creative team more concerned with weight than spectacle, and with responsibility rather than interpretation. This piece demands something from its performers: emotional discipline, spiritual awareness and restraint. It also asks something of its audience. The experience is ceremonial, inviting viewers to engage with the work rather than being guided through it.
AVP interview with Deyemi Okanlawon and Kehinde Bankole (YouTube)
Placing Crown of Blood within the landscape of African and Black British theatre is essential. The work does not stand alone as an experiment. It belongs to a longer continuum of artists who have used classical forms to interrogate questions of authority, inheritance and resistance in the present moment. Rather than seeking validation from the canon it references, the production asserts its own authorship.
For African and diaspora audiences, the resonance is immediate and layered. The language of fate, sacrifice and consequence is familiar, even when expressed through new theatrical forms. For wider audiences, Crown of Blood offers an encounter with theatre that is serious, unsettling and considered. It does not rely on novelty or translation. It asks audiences to sit with what remains.
AVP Editorial Context
African Voices Platform has been in conversation with the creative team behind Crown of Blood throughout the rehearsal period, including interviews with director Mojisola Kareem, writer Oladipo Agboluaje, lead cast members, and the Music Director. This article forms part of AVP’s wider editorial coverage exploring African and diaspora-led storytelling on British stages.