Join ARTFARM for a special opportunity to work with internationally acclaimed
Congolesean theater artist, Toto Kisaku
Sunday, July 31 
10am - 1pm in Middletown, CT 

Attendance is by Donation, but Registration is Required.
  
Six Feet Under the Losers is Toto's current Work In Progress
exploring the living conditions of modern society
in a time of pandemic through the lens... of an undertaker.

  6 FEET
will be an active, on-your-feet workshop
exploring the themes of this new provocative work.

Come ready to move, explore and play.

Toto Kisaku is an award-winning Congolese playwright, actor, director and theater producer. Born in Kinshasa, he studied Education in High School and Drama at the National Institute of Arts in Kinshasa, and after university he began collaborations with many internationally known artists including Mwambay Kalengay, Jacques Livchine, DieudonnéNiangouna, Sophie Lecarpentier and Philip Boulay. Through these collaborations, Kisaku found inspiration through Patrice Chereau and Bernard Marie Koltes, which led to the development of his process Quatre Murs (Four Walls).

In late 2015, Kisaku arrived in the United States to seek political asylum, which he was granted in March 2018. Since his arrival in the United States, the ongoing tensions that his country of origin (and the country that has welcomed him) have greatly informed Kisaku’s art, with his work focusing on transcendence from the constraints of daily life, the examination of community social conditions and the exploration of how those living in poverty and/or under oppressive regimes can expand and enrich their lives through art. Kisaku invites both the audience and the actor to travel beyond the walls of the performance space. Kisaku has been featured in NPR, ArtForum and

TheWashington Times and is the recipient of the 2010 "Freedom to Create Prize” in Cairo, Egypt and the New England Foundation of the Arts’ Rebecca Blunk Fund award in 2018. Additionally, Kisaku has led workshops and talks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa and Europe, and in the United States at Wesleyan University, Quinnipiac Universityand Hampshire College, and his latest piece 7 Dialogues was performed at the Yale School of Architecture alongside Sydney Lemmon through the Garden Pleasure project.

To date, Kisaku has written five plays (Rencontre au Pluriel, Basal’ya Bazoba, Surface, Requiem for an Electric Chair and Seven Dialogues), and he is currently writing a new play titled Six Feet Under the Loser. Requiem For An Electric Chair, Kisaku’s first play performed in English, premiered at the 2018 Arts & Ideas Festival to sold out shows, and he served as the first Artist in Residence there in 2019. “Requiem for an Electric Chair” has since been presented at the Barrow Group Performing Arts Center in New York City and the Studio Theatre in Washington D.C., and will tour the US through 2023.