HartBeat Ensemble Presents Congolese Playwright-Actor Toto Kisaku in Requiem for an Electric Chair
Saturday, May 13 Performance Part of HartBeat Ensemble’s (im)Migration 360 Series
HartBeat Ensemble (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr., Artistic Director and Rhoda Cerritelli, Managing Director) presents Congolese Playwright and Actor Toto Kisaku in his original one-person drama Requiem for an Electric Chair on Saturday, May 13 at 7:30pm. Based on Kisaku’s harrowing personal experience in jail in his home country, the play will be performed at the Carriage House Theatre located at 360 Farmington Avenue in Hartford, CT.
Requiem for an Electric Chair is Saturday, May 13 at 7:30pm. General Admission tickets are $25; Student and Seniors are $20. No one turned away for lack of funds. Tickets and information can be found at HartBeatEnsemble.org.
About the Play
Requiem for an Electric Chair tells the true story of Toto Kisaku, who was sent to death row for his musical comedies that educated the public about disinformation and child abuse by local churches and the complicit role of the government. In performing Requiem, Kisaku takes the audience on a journey from his imprisonment, using mannequins on stage to stand in for the cellmates whose faces Kisaku could not make out in the dark, to his escape from the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2015.
“I wanted to show people what happens to people who are waiting to be executed. Two minutes before you are executed, what are you seeing? What are you thinking about the world?” he said. The play culminates with his journey to the U.S., where he was granted asylum in 2018.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there is a growing problem of children who are systematically mistreated, accused of witchcraft or sorcery, and driven from their parental homes into the streets to fend for themselves. Toto and his theater company took up the cause of these children and created theatrical performances/events to bring attention to their plight. The performances renewed attention to the Children’s Protection Law voted in January 2009 by the Congolese parliament, but which, sadly, had not been enforced in any way by the government to protect these abandoned children.
Because of the attention the performances were receiving and the growing backlash against the government, Toto was persecuted by the regime. Requiem For An Electric Chair chronicles this story.
The artistic team for Requiem for an Electric Chair is Hanifa Nayo Washington (co-director/producer/sound Design); Will MacAdams (co-director/dramaturg); David Sepulveda (scenic design); Jamie Burnett (lighting design); Susan McCaslin (sculpture design); Yaira Maryakubova (music composition); Rachel Zwick (stage manager); Sara Zunda (live illustration); Robert Barsky (script translation); Michael Wyant (production advisor); and Patrick Dufou, Rose Anou and Sara Zunda (voice actors).
Requiem for an Electric Chair is part of HartBeat Ensemble’s (im)Migration 360, a series of convenings, workshops, discussions, and performances interrogating the crises and joys and culture-building around the migration of people within the Americas and from other continents to Connecticut. In light of Connecticut’s self-proclaimed status as a “sanctuary state,” as well as HartBeat’s reputation as a community-based professional theatre, HartBeat is developing an ever-evolving series of events that seeks to stimulate learning, promote healing and build stronger cross-cultural communities that have landed here on Turtle Island.
Artistic Director Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr. states, “The series’ name is telling — (im)Migration 360– problematizes the word ‘immigration.’ Technically, migration means a temporary relocation to another region or country and immigration means a permanent relocation. But what do we really mean when we say ‘immigrant?’ If we’re citizens of the world, aren’t we all ‘migrating?’ Or is the word immigration just code for illegally migrating?”
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