Joy Nesbitt's Royal Court debut moves between an 1862 plantation cabin and the same room today, now let out as a holiday rental.
Joy Nesbitt makes her Royal Court debut with Blood of my Blood at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, from Thursday 1 October to Saturday 7 November 2026. It plays the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.
The play moves between two timelines in one cabin. In Bullock Creek, South Carolina, in 1862, Ginnie Good raises five children there while war goes on beyond the fields. In the present, the cabin is let out as a holiday rental, and a pregnant Black woman uses conjure to reach ancestors she does not yet know how to question.
Nesbitt wrote it to honour her own ancestors and the many Black women whose stories remain unwritten. It is her first professional stage production, supported by the Concord Theatricals Unpublished Playwrights Award before the Royal Court took it on.
The run falls in the theatre’s seventieth anniversary season. The Royal Court has staged plays by writers not yet produced since 1956, the year Look Back in Anger opened there.
Tatenda Shamiso directs a cast led by Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ, with Jodie Campbell, Hannah Morrish, Karene Peter and Patrick Vaill. Part of the run plays alongside Man to Man downstairs.