Donald Glover Postpones Remainder of Childish Gambino North American Farewell Tour to ‘Focus on My Physical Health’

Jem Aswad

Donald Glover has postponed the remaining North American dates of his final tour as Childish Gambino to “focus on my physical health.”

“Hey everyone,” he wrote on social media Monday. “Unfortunately i have to postpone the rest of the North American tour to focus on my physical health for a few weeks.  Hold onto your tickets.  ALL tickets will be honored for the upcoming dates in North America when they are rescheduled.  Thanks for the privacy. Thanks for the support. Thanks for the love.” No further details were provided; a rep for Glover did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for more information.

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The North American tour had a month remaining at the time of Glover’s announcement, with the next scheduled date in Austin, Texas on Tuesday, then moving through the West Coast and Midwest before a final date in Chicago on October 3. The tour was scheduled to move overseas in November (first Europe, and then New Zealand and Australia in January and February of 2025), so it seems likely the dates will be rescheduled for next year.

The “New World” tour is part of Glover’s self-proclaimed “final” project from his Childish Gambino persona and includes his latest album, the excellent “Bando Stone and the New World,” a forthcoming film of the same name, a re-release of his equally excellent “3.15.2020” album — which he rush-released in the early days of the pandemic but has remixed, revamped and retitled “Atavista” — and, possibly most elaborate of all, this “New World Tour,” which employed complex technology, lighting, lasers and more.

Glover was in fine voice and physical form at the tour’s first of two nights in Brooklyn last month; the show is physically demanding, with the focus nearly constantly on Glover for all 90 minutes, so any impairment would definitely have an impact.

Its expansive technology means that it will be expensive to postpone. Variety wrote, “Designed by Tobias Rylander (Beyonce, the 1975), the technology for the show is truly next-level — a performance in Connecticut over the weekend was canceled because the venue apparently couldn’t present it properly — and there were two stages and two tall vertical lighting towers on either end of the arena, as well as big cube-shaped video screens on either side of the stage and a long walkway leading out into the audence; there was also a more conventional horizontal lighting rig and banks of laser lights that could pierce the air individually or shoot from one tower to another, forming perpendicular curtains of light. Most dazzling of all, above the end of the walkway was a sort of giant crystal cloud comprised of a couple hundred icicle-like rods that lit up in synchronized sequences — and even featured a giant mosaic-like video of Glover’s face — and rose and descended throughout the show. The audience was warned, by both a voiceover and later, Glover himself, not to look directly into the lasers or ultra-bright lights.”

Variety will have more on the situation as it develops.

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