Help Toto Kisaku Create Next Ground-Breaking Play
Donation protected
! We are Not in This Alone !
Help Toto Kisaku Create and Bring His Next Ground-Breaking Play to Life
Perhaps you were fortunate enough to have seen Toto Kisaku in his life-changing play, Requiem For an Electric Chair, during his tenure as the 2019 Artist-in-Residence for the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, CT. Or maybe you or your children were drawn into the magic of performance and production through one of Toto’s interactive theater programs.
Toto has now begun work on his next full-length play, Six Feet Under the Loser, which ponders the role of work and working conditions, and the complex impact it has on our souls and relationships – all with a touch of existential pathos.
- I am not making art just to represent the world, daily life, the journey, the environment, or to make change. I am making art to bring out the sense, the reason of that representation or of that change, and in reach of those that are represented – as part of our desire for change. – Toto Kisaku
To understand why your support is so critical, and how it will also play a key role in welcoming a widening group of diverse theater-goers, I would like to provide some background, and share with you the goals and timeline for this project.
Toto’s Journey from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to New Haven, CT
Toto Kisaku is an award-winning playwright, whose roots are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He has received extensive accolades and recognition for his international work as an actor, director and producer -- as well as for his writing. With his young son, Toto arrived in the United States in late 2015 seeking political asylum, which he was granted in 2018. The events leading up to his journey are harrowing, and highlight his strong humanitarian values, courage and the creative force he used to shine a light on appalling practices which were occurring within the Congo. This was so hauntingly, but brilliantly, brought to multiple stages in Toto’s well-received one-person play, Requiem for an Electric Chair.
Your Role to Help Toto Create His Next Play, and Bring It to a National Audience
And while Toto has created and helped to stage several shorter plays, and produced other programming from his adopted home in Connecticut, he has now begun work on his next full-length play, Six Feet Under the Loser. As one can imagine, and like many other artists, particularly during these pandemic times, Toto has had to work multiple jobs, in order to support himself and his son. He would like to take a few weeks this winter or early spring in which he can fully devote his time and creativity to putting on paper the play that he has already begun to develop. He envisions clearing his plate and being able to write uninterrupted in a calming, solitary setting.
Your contributions (of any size) will provide Toto with the necessary support to do this! He already has a strong sense of how his play will be staged – and looks forward to bringing a production team together, as soon as in the late Spring, to help realize his vision.
The last exciting phase involves connecting and collaborating with theater venues and coordinating related promotional efforts. Some venues have already expressed strong interest. The “stage” for Six Feet Under the Loser will ideally be… outdoors. Summer and Fall performances are considered optimal for this.
- We are not just making art for the people; we are also making art because of them. I want to stage this play in the round and outdoors -- in Connecticut, in New England and elsewhere in the United States. I want to invite communities to experience art and explore an inside view from the outside. I appreciate that not everyone has had the privilege of being connected to their real light, and in concert with their environment. This is one of the themes of the play, so it is fitting to stage it within the elements of the great outdoors. – Toto Kisaku
- From the bottom of my heart to your generous one, I thank you for your support and vote of confidence! - Toto
And please continue to visit this page for updates on Toto’s progress, and where you might see a production of Six Feet Under the Loser – as he moves on to producing and staging his play. www.kmutheater.net
Statement of Artistic Practice, by Toto Kisaku
"I am a theater maker, but I do not just write plays. Rather, I explore the identity and environment of a community through theatrical art. The construction of the scenic environment is the major part of my artistic work, before inventing and inviting the characters to take possession of it. Starting from this environment, I explore the « quatre murs » or "four walls": the interior of a body -- with or without life -- a constitution, a community, a political and social system, the common thought of a group of individuals or an organization. Based on these materials, I take drama, tragedy, comedy, habits, questions, silences, thoughts, new forms and – always -- identity to create something new. It is in the depths of these four walls that I search for and find emptiness, an opportunity within each person and each community to realize their values and metamorphosize through the introduction of beauty and the principles of art.
I consider the public as a major player in all my artistic projects. He is an integral part of the show because it is about him that it is in my plays. So he is this need that the theater today must compose. He is the breath of any action in a room. The theater adds a real dimension to his daily life, saving him, sometimes, from the drama and tragic situation offered by the physical environment (« quatre murs ») and the political systems in which he lives.
That's why I take the risk of taking the theater out of the building and into the neighborhoods where people live, work, play, love. And this great need is found in this one who discovers the magic of the theater and reacts. I force myself to reinvent a theater that tells the truth in beauty, which values and rehabilitates the human. That is who I am."
News articles about Toto Kisaku and his play, Requiem for An Electric Chair
Toto's first major work in English, Requiem for an Electric Chair, is based on his arrest, imprisonment, and near-miraculous escape from execution in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Connecticut Public Radio / WNPR: Congolese Actor Toto Kisaku on How Theater Saved His Life
https://www.ctpublic.org/arts-and-culture/2018-06-15/congolese-actor-toto-kisaku-on-how-theater-saved-his-life
Yale Daily News: Toto Kisaku: Risking It All
New Haven Register: Playwright Shares Story of Escape from Congo in One-Man Show at Yale
Organizer and beneficiary
Lisa Kaston
Organizer
New Haven, CT
Toto Kisaku
Beneficiary