Toto Kisaku's REQUIEM FOR AN ELECTRIC CHAIR Comes to the Warner Theatre

The Warner Theatre will present Requiem for an Electric Chair, a powerful one-man play by award-winning Congolese playwright Toto Kisaku, on Saturday, March 21, 2026, at 3:30 PM and 7:00 PM in the Nancy Marine Studio Theatre.

"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?" says Kisaku. This harrowing true story chronicles Kisaku's persecution, imprisonment, and near execution in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where his musical comedies exposing child exploitation and government complicity put him on death row. Opening with his interview with a U.S. immigration officer, the play takes audiences from his arrest and incarceration to his escape in 2015 and eventual asylum in the United States in 2018.

Kisaku describes Requiem for an Electric Chair as a work of catharsis and witness, designed to process his own trauma while simultaneously alerting the world to ongoing suffering in his homeland. The art that led to Kisaku's death sentence was also his salvation. This work, which exposed uncomfortable truths about government complicity, made him a target of the regime. Yet it was also this same artistic voice—and the international attention it garnered—that ultimately helped secure his freedom. 

Requiem for an Electric Chair was commissioned by the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, CT and made its world premiere at the Iseman Theater in 2018. It has since been performed all over the country including Washington D.C. (Studio Theatre), New York City (Barrow Group and Congo in Harlem Festival), Maine (Portland Ovations), and Connecticut (Yale Schwarzman Center & HartBeat Ensemble).

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