05 Aug 2018

Botswana Tourism Organisation (BTO) has held promotional events for the I Love Botswana Ensemble in Maun, Kasane and recently Francistown.

I Love Botswana Ensemble, a collaborative assortment of Botswana’s modern and traditional performing arts groups that came together to tell cultural stories of humanity through the ways of life of Batswana, is scheduled to perform in Broadway, New York from August 22-23.

Speaking in an interview with BOPA, BTO public relations officer, Samuel Lephalo said the production tagged #BotswanaonBroadway was a national project where, I Love Botswana Ensemble would perform their new musical titled Pula or rain in English on Broadway, a network of the largest theatres in the world.

The name Pula according to Lephalo was befitting since it echoed the mystical relationship Batswana had with rain. He said the production chronicles a rainmaker’s quest to regain her power and her physical and spiritual rite of passage took her to the inland delta and savannahs of their homeland whereupon she consulted the tribe, animals and plants for wisdom with the aim of bringing rain to her land. The ensemble will perform three productions in one of Broadway stages in Times Square, New York.

Lephalo said having Botswana on Broadway was a big deal since it would market the country to international communities. He also said Botswana on Broadway would create awareness on the nation’s cultural and eco-tourism.

“With the growth of the arts industry, cultural tourism infused with the performing arts can make this country a tourist hot spot. Luckily for Botswana, we have been able to identify such potential and we are going to harness it fully.

To see how much potential cultural tourism has, Botswana spent P15 million on the ITB Berlin last year and raked in more than P200 million return profit,” he said. ENDS