Award-winning Motswana actor, Donald Molosi, who shot to new heights of international prominence in the past couple of years with his one-man plays, “Today It’s Me” and “Blue, Black and White”, is set to stage his third off Broadway one-man play, “Motswana”.
Molosi is happy that his play will premier in New York City as part of the United Solo Festival, the world’s biggest solo-theatre festival.
His play was chosen out of over a hundred solo plays selected from all over the world for the prestigious festival.
Molosi is the only actor from Africa to have been selected.
“I work extremely hard to contribute to the prosperity of my country, in and outside our borders, so I am proud that our Botswana flag will be among those that will proudly fly in New York’s Theatre District when I take to the Broadway stages next month,” says Molosi.
He stated that when it comes to writing his solo plays, he writes them by himself. With his Motswana play, the actor explains that he took the opportunity to call it Motswana with the sole aim to introduce to the world who a Motswana is and what the Republic and citizen stand for.
In his play, Molosi states that Motswana simply means “citizen of Botswana”.
“This intimate multilingual show satirically questions who exactly can confidently claim to be a Motswana. What unexpected revelations spring up once we acknowledge that African borders were drawn as a fiction fabricated to serve European greed? Is “Motswana” perhaps a misnomer given the migratory nature of African peoples before borders?”
These are the issues that Molosi expertly tackles in his new show, which is expected
to make acting history, given the successes of his earlier film and stage projects, which included “Blue, Black and White” about the life of Sir Seretse Khama, which recently premiered in Botswana after much success internationally, scooping numerous acting awards around the world in the past four years, says Molosi.
As if his recent “Blue, Black and White” tour in Botswana was not a big enough highlight for the year for Donald Molosi, the actor is back to work, trying to stage an even more game-changing one-man play.
Molosi’s tour in Botswana last year was seen as a benchmark for local performers. From publicity to branding, performance and the aftermath, the tour was well planned and professionally executed.
“I work hard and when I was in Botswana this summer, I rehearsed 16 hours a day to get everything right,” states Molosi.
With his fiction plays and poetry widely published in prestigious literary magazines such as Saraba throughout the African continent, Molosi is recognized as one of the finest and most influential artists in Botswana, especially after his recent tour in the country that saw many dignitaries, including President Ian Khama, former President Sir Ketumile Masire, Dumelang Saleshando, Margaret Nasha and others in attendance at his shows.
