STAGE

Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka is directing the New York premiere of his play “Death and the King’s Horseman,” which is scheduled to open Sunday at Lincoln Center. First performed in the United States in Chicago in 1979, the play focuses on a Yoruba suicide rite and the storm it caused in Soyinka’s native Nigeria when it was a British crown colony during World War II. On the subject of ritual death, Soyinka said: “It is a subject which always fascinates me. I mean, the greatest religions seem to be based on this issue.”