Shades of Change

Theater was a critical component of the cultural work that Medu organized in Botswana. One of the group’s acclaimed plays was Shades of Change. Written by Mongane Wally Serote, the two-man play is set in a prison cell amid the fervor of the 1976 Soweto uprising. In 1982, for the second run of the play, Medu member Teresa Devant traveled to the Market Theatre in Johannesburg to audition South Africans. She cast Lammy Shoba and Joka Scott, who performed the play in Botswana for five months just prior to Medu’s Festival of Culture and Resistance.