Chadwick Boseman’s “Deep Azure” will make its London debut in 2026, spotlighting police violence and grief through Hip-Hop.
Chadwick Boseman mixed Hip-Hop and Shakespeare in a haunting stage piece about police violence and grief that will debut in London’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in February 2026.
The late actor’s play, Deep Azure, will be staged at the indoor candlelit venue operated by Shakespeare’s Globe, marking its first UK production, according to The Guardian.
Originally written in response to the 2000 police killing of Boseman’s Howard University classmate Prince Jones, the work explores themes of racial injustice, mourning and spiritual resilience.
Director Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, who will lead the London production, called the play “incredibly poignant in speaking about the injustices of police brutality and the unwinding nature of grief, but also the gorgeous brilliance of our Black Souls and exploring every hue they can express on a stage.”
Boseman, who died in 2020 at age 43 after a private battle with cancer, penned the play before his rise to global fame as T’Challa in Marvel’s Black Panther.
He studied classical theater at Oxford through the British American Drama Academy. He began shaping Deep Azure after the death of Prince Jones, who was fatally shot by an undercover Prince George’s County police officer in Virginia. The officer mistook Jones for a suspect and fired 16 times.
Jones was unarmed.
The tragedy left a lasting impression on Boseman and fellow Howard alum Ta-Nehisi Coates, who later chronicled the event in his 2015 book Between the World and Me.
In 2006, a jury awarded damages to Jones’s daughter in a civil case for wrongful death.
The Sam Wanamaker production will run from February 7 through April 11, 2026.
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