Biodun jeyifo biography samples

Features correspondent

Death and the King’s Horseman reflected a new global culture and a linguistic destiny many did not see coming, writes Biodun Jeyifo.

What makes Death and the King’s Horseman so powerful as drama is the myriad of narratives, fables, songs, chants and dances that simultaneously celebrate and elegise the terror of death.

In this respect, the play reminds us of similar cultural forms and attitudes surrounding death in many of the world’s civilisations, from ancient traditions documented in the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead to the Mexican Day of the Dead.

To continue to be able to observe and celebrate these traditions or not – that is the central axis of the plot of Death and the King’s Horseman, which stretches the boundary between ancient ritual and modern performance (with long passages of trance and possession that few modern plays contain).