welcome

Video made by Tiffany Hopkins

Toto Kisaku is an award-winning Congolese playwright, actor, ​director, and theater producer who studied drama at the National ​Institute of Arts in Kinshasa. After establishing the K-Mu Theater in ​2003, he spent the next 15 years traveling the world producing and ​participating in plays. Toto arrived in the United States in late 2015 ​seeking political asylum, which he was granted in March 2018 and ​becomes a US resident in July 2023.

Since his arrival in the U.S., Toto has spent his time learning and ​redefining his artistic expression based on the tension that both his ​country of origin and the country which has welcomed him endure. ​In his work, Toto transcends the constraints of daily life and ​examines how people living in poverty or under oppressive regimes ​can recreate their environments and improve their lives through ​artistic activities. Toto’s pieces invite both spectator and actor to ​find ways to go beyond the walls of both, the performance and ​living space.

Rays Kisaku photo

Toto’s piece Requiem For An Electric Chair, his first play to be performed in ​English, premiered at the 2018 International Festival of Arts & Ideas Artist with ​three sold-out performances. In 2019, as the Festival's inaugural Artist in ​Residence, Toto led workshops and talks at Wesleyan University, Quinnipiac ​University, Shipman Goodwin, Hampshire College, Yale University, Connecticut ​College, among others, and presented remotely in the Democratic Republic of ​Congo, Africa, and Europe. Requiem for an Electric Chair was performed in ​2019 at the Barrow Group Performing Arts Center in New York City and at ​Studio Theatre in Washington D.C. and is currently touring the U.S. Extending ​through 2023, the tour kicked off in Spring 2021 at Portland Ovations in ​Portland, Maine, Yale Schwarzman Center, and he recently performed at the ​Hartbeat Ensemble. His most recent play, 7 Dialogues (2021), was performed at ​Yale School of Architecture by Sydney Lemmon and Toto Kisaku as part of the ​Garden Pleasure project. Toto is currently writing a new play entitled Six Feet ​Under the Loser. He made a new Storytelling Workshop about self-care and ​Human Rights called “Right, Strong and Broken Circle” that was presented in ​October 2023 and April 2024 with the Robert L. Bernstein International Human ​Rights Symposium, Yale Law School at Yale University.

Toto has been featured on NPR, ArtForum and The Washington Times, New ​Haven Register, etc. He is the recipient of the 2010 Freedom to Create Prize, ​presented in Cairo, Egypt. He is also the recipient of the 2018 Rebecca Blunk ​Fund Award, granted by the New England Foundation for the Arts.

About the piece

The audience is invited to explore the long, dark shadows global compliance

casts on places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The walls come down. The four walls of an illegal detention cell, where Toto and ​6 others are held awaiting their certain execution somewhere in the outer ​regions of Kinshasa, Congo- are pulled down at the start of the play after Toto ​asks the audience, “Are you ready? Because, I’m ready.”

The cell is both real and a metaphor of the mind. The powers-that-be are ​represented by live-illustrations, projected drawings that interact with Toto.

The remaining detainees are symbolized by life sized sculpted mannequins- ​they are motionless throughout the play. They represent time, detainees and ​Toto’s different positions from the first to the seventh day.

A live score of music for violin and some audio recordings weaves in and out of ​the entire performance.

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PRODUCTION FEE

Three people on tour

• Actor
  
• Light designer
  
• Stage Manager
  

Two Performance + ​package

20% off per performance

Judy Rosenthal photo

Sara Zunda: Quick sketches of the stage

Team Production

Will McAdams

Jamie Burnett

Co-Director & Dramaturg

Lighting Design

Sara Zunda

Live Illustration

David Sepulveda photo

Special Thanks

Kehler Liddell Gallery (KLG)

Whitneyville Cultural Commons

Lotta Studio

Yale University

Literacy Volunteers of Waterbury

The Yale Schwarzman Center

Portland Ovations

Artistic Freedom Initiative

Quinnipiac University

Connecticut College

All photo credits, except those are mentioned go to Nosrat ​Tarighi

Toni Dorfman & Yale School of Drama

Cathy Edwards & NEFA

Philip Bither

Semi Semi-Dikoko

Tom Sellar

Tom Coach

Joshua Borenstein

Jock Reynolds

Lisa Karston

Jake Halpern

Robert Richter

Chad & Michelle Herzog, Thomas Griggs, Liz Fisher

Susan Clinard

Sheila Hayre

Jean Kerr

Jennifer Newman

Kirk Bartholomew

Marcella Trowbridge

Commissioned by

I’d known of Toto Kisaku’s work from theater friends in Paris before I met ​him in 2016 in New Haven, where he’d fled seeking political asylum.

His solo play Requiem for an Electric Chair, his first play in English, is an ​astonishing piece of theater: the transformation of a horrifying experience, ​his own as a political prisoner in the Congo, into a transcendent affirmation ​of the human spirit as a force for good.

His subsequent work continues to focus on how art, specifically (but not ​limited to) theater, brings people together. His play 7 Dialogues evokes ​anomie, despair, and epiphanies of connection. His play in progress, Six ​Feet under the Losers, begun in the time of Covid, is an absurdist comedy as ​well as an elegy.

His work teaching theater to children and young people is another activity ​he’s great at. As his friend I’m like his lucky students: Toto surprises, ​teaches, and delights me.

​--Toni Dorfman, opera director & theater professor

Riveting. Heart-wrenching. Thought-provoking. Requiem for an Electric Chair is all ​these things and more. Toto Kisaku’s story of his detention experience in the ​Congo and his harrowing escape from execution elicits intense feelings of ​sadness and fear in his audience. His bravery in using his artistic voice to expose ​corruption and injustice shines through in his every action during the play. Toto’s ​distinctly unique and masterful way of storytelling, including the use of a live ​drawing and paper mache sculptures, fascinates the senses and the mind. Every ​inch of one’s body experiences his panic about death and the unknown, his ​frustration with his oppressors, and his deep appreciation for every moment of ​life itself. Toto’s story not only evokes thoughtful consideration about the great ​suffering caused by oppressive regimes, but on a broader level, sincerely ​demonstrates to the audience how to find strength in one’s voice. I had a lump in ​my throat, a pit in my stomach, and have not stopped thinking about the play ​since watching it.

​--By Jenna Driscoll (performance February 9, 2024, Connecticut College)

Medias

Jamie Burnett photo

Judy Rosenthal photo

All photo credits except those are ​mentioned go to Nosrat Tarighi