Maria Kizito

During the 1994 Tutsi Genocide, a Rwandan nun named Maria Kizito aided in the massacre of 7,000 refugees at her convent in Sovu.  She was subsequently tried in Belgium for crimes against humanity and sentenced to seven years.  In attendance at her trial was American playwright Erik Ehn, who would be inspired to create a 17-play cycle about genocide, and about America's involvement in so many of the 20th century's atrocities, entitled Soulographie.

Since 2009, under the direction of Emily Mendelsohn, Maria Kizito has had a reading at Uganda’s National Theatre, workshops at Brown University, NACL, and the Joan Mitchell Center, and was performed as part of the full 17-play Soulographie cycle at La MaMa in New York City in 2012.

In November 2014, with support from the TCG Global Connections program, the ArtSpot ensemble joined several Ugandan and American actors in a full production of the piece. Blending poetry and document, sculpture and everyday object, live music and heightened gesture to bear witness to the events that took place at the convent, Maria Kizito is an act of witness and an act of empathy, imagining our own capacity for violence.