New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
‘Requiem for an Electric Chair’: Congo story comes to fruition
Congolese theater artistactivist Toto Kisaku should, by all that’s unholy in his native country, be dead — executed by order of a tyrannical government.
Instead, Kisaku lives to tell his story of torture, his death sentence and escape in “Requiem for an Electric Chair,” which receives its world premiere Friday and Saturday, June 22-23, at The Iseman Theatre in New Haven as part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
As luck would have it, Kisaku’s art proved his salvation three years ago when a soldier’s gun pressed against his head, seconds away from separating it from his shoulders.
“The man who was supposed to kill me saw a play of mine performed,” said Kisaku, who wrote “Requiem for an Electric Chair” and is its sole performer. “He said, ‘I cannot kill you because I know you.’
“Art saved my life,” he said, “so the only way I have to take out all the pain is by doing theater.”
Ironically, the art that saved Kisaku’s life is the same art that landed him in his death cell. Kisaku, whose experimental and innately political plays have been produced in his motherland as well as in festivals worldwide, ruffled the epaulets of officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo displeased with his play about children who they persecuted for practicing sorcery. Born 40 years ago in Kinshasa, Kisaku arrived in the Connecticut two years ago as
a refugee, intent on sharing his story.
“He said that he wanted to get it out of him as away of like healing and moving on,” said Hanifa Nayo Washington, who serves as the production’s producer and codirects with Will MacAdams.
Washington, an arts activist in New Haven, first met Kisaku at one of the Literary Happy Hours that she organizes last March and she invited him to present at the next Literary Happy Hour.
“He told be what happened — how he was almost killed, how he escaped, and how he had written this play about it,” she said. “I was totally shocked but elated that he was there. But I could also see the pain, the trauma. My heart broke for him, his children, and those who didn’t make it out. I’m a spiritual person and, as I’ve said before, this feels like a spiritual assignment.”
Washington said that Kisaku adamantly expressed his desire to put his show up before summer passed.
“So he said, ‘Can you help me do this play?’ ” said Washington, who said that she prioritizes projects about liberation and healing. “I was like, ‘Oh.’ I thought I was hosting for this one event, but OK, you need bigger, more sustainable help. I said sure, of course, without really knowing what I was going to do.”
Since he was used to producing his works simply and quickly back in the Congo, he felt a bit restrained as the process here proved more deliberate. He had to write the script in French, then have it translated to English so that he and his collaborators could stay on the same page.
“We met weekly to work on structure of piece,” said Washington, noting that Kisaku had previously lined up sculptor Susan McCaslin to design and create mannequins to represent the play’s other characters; artist Sara Zunda to create live illustration; and scenic designer David Sepulveda to join them on the production. MacAdams signed on more recently.
The team presented an eight-minute intro in Citywide Open Studios with a talk-back with the audience, Washington said, that gave the festival folks a good idea of what they would have for this summer’s slate. Encouraging feedback flourished and “Requiem for an Electric Chair” was off to the races.
“My story is about African people,” said Kisaku, the recipient of the 2010 “Freedom to Create Prize,” presented in Cairo, Egypt. “People in America and Europe don’t really know what’s up in those different countries that aren’t supported by their government.
“The play is intense, I know,” said Kisaku. “I do the play because I want people to have a focus on the world, the neighborhood. So much happens outside the United States. They need to know that.”