After captivating audiences on the international stage, Botswana multidisciplinary artist Lone Motsomi has brought her deeply personal and powerful production home.
Kgololo: The Way Out Is Inward made its highly anticipated Botswana premiere at Maitisong Theatre in Gaborone on Sunday, 30 August 2026, marking an emotional homecoming following its world premiere in China in 2025.
More than a performance, Kgololo is a journey into the hidden places of the human experience — where grief meets memory, pain confronts healing, and the search for freedom begins not by running away, but by looking within.
At the heart of the work is one powerful question:
What if the way out of pain is not escape, but confrontation?
For Motsomi, the answer lies inward.
Drawing from childhood pain, absence, resentment, family history, spiritual questioning and the difficult journey towards self-acceptance, Kgololo explores the experiences we carry silently — and how those experiences live on in the body.
WHEN THE BODY REMEMBERS
In Kgololo, movement becomes a language.
It speaks where words sometimes fail.
Through a striking fusion of contemporary movement, theatre, storytelling and traditional influences, Motsomi transforms personal memory into a shared experience. The performance invites audiences to reflect on the emotional weight they carry and to consider what happens when they finally stop running from the experiences that shaped them.
The work is rooted in Motsomi’s belief that the body remembers.
Rather than presenting healing as simple, quick or linear, Kgololo confronts the complexity of pain and asks whether true liberation can begin only when we are willing to face what we have spent years trying to escape.
The title itself carries profound personal meaning.
In Setswana, kgololo speaks to liberation. But it is also the name of Motsomi’s late father, giving the production an even deeper connection to memory, loss and personal history.
In this way, Kgololo becomes both a story of freedom and a conversation with the past.
AFRICAN TALENT, ONE POWERFUL VISION
The production brings together an exceptional creative team from Botswana and South Africa, uniting talent and experience from theatre, film, television and the wider performing arts.
Kgololo is executive produced by South African actor and filmmaker Thabo Rametsi and Motswana actor, writer and filmmaker Donald Molosi. Noxolo Dlamini and MotherK Masire serve as producers, while acclaimed Botswana theatre practitioner Tefo Paya directs the production. Mpho Sebina serves as Marketing Coordinator.
Rametsi and Molosi previously collaborated on the UK-produced film 2064, and their reunion for Kgololo represents another powerful African creative partnership.
Explaining why he chose to executive-produce the production, Rametsi said:
“I chose to come on board because this performance piece is breathtaking! The world needs to see it, needs to see young African artists coming together to immortalize our story on a grand scale. Lone is a generational talent.”
For Molosi, Kgololo represents an important moment in the evolution of Botswana theatre.
“Solo theatre created my Broadway success for 15 years, and solo theatre again will change our Botswana theatre history. Lone’s new work, Kgololo, is an important milestone in Botswana’s solo theatre history. I decided to executive-produce it alongside Thabo because Lone’s work is masterful and important. It needs to be seen.”
South African actress and performing artist Noxolo Dlamini, whose career spans theatre, film and television, described Motsomi’s commitment to confronting her own experiences as one of the reasons she connected deeply with the work.
“One of the biggest reasons I fell in love with Lone was how intentional she’s always been about her healing journey. She truly embodies looking inward in order to find her way out. As tough as confronting traumas may be, she never runs away from the work. This piece is something the world needs to know. We all battle with the past.”
With MotherK Masire bringing her creative production experience and Tefo Paya lending his extensive knowledge of Botswana’s performing arts landscape, the team has created a production that is both deeply personal and distinctly African.
FROM THE WORLD STAGE, BACK HOME
The Botswana premiere marks another defining chapter in Lone Motsomi’s remarkable artistic journey.
Motsomi spent 13 years with Mophato Dance Theatre before performing in Pula! The Musical on Broadway. Her growing international career has also seen her appear in major screen productions including The Woman King, opposite Viola Davis, as well as Shaka iLembe, G20 and Blood & Water.
Yet, with all the international stages and global productions, Kgololo brings Motsomi back to where the story truly begins — home.
Rooted in Botswana, personal history and the universal search for freedom, the production asks questions that reach far beyond one person’s life:
What do we inherit?
What do we carry?
What must we release?
And how do we become free without abandoning where we come from?
By placing deeply personal memory within a bold contemporary performance framework, Kgololo creates a bridge between the individual and the collective. One person’s story becomes a mirror in which audiences may recognise pieces of their own.
A FORMIDABLE WELCOME HOME
Following the Botswana premiere, the Kgololo team expressed heartfelt gratitude to audiences, artists, partners and supporters who made the homecoming possible.
The team described the reception as a formidable welcome home, thanking Botswana for receiving the production with openness, warmth and generosity.
For a work built around memory, identity and liberation, returning home carried meaning beyond the theatre stage.
The response from the Botswana audience affirmed the power of art to create spaces where difficult experiences can be confronted, explored and shared.
The team extends sincere appreciation to everyone who attended the premiere, supported the production, contributed to its presentation and helped make it possible for Kgololo to return to Botswana after beginning its international journey in China.
Now, the Botswana premiere opens the door to the production’s next chapter.
Kgololo: The Way Out Is Inward first premiered in China in 2025. On 30 August 2026, it came home.
For Lone Motsomi, it is a return to home ground.
For the creative team, it is a moment of gratitude.
Thank you, Botswana.
And for audiences, Kgololo leaves behind an invitation that lingers long after the lights have gone down:
Look inward.
Because perhaps the greatest freedom does not begin with running away.
Perhaps the way out… is inward.
