A Reading Guide to Kaneza Schaal’s KLII

by Gordon Fung

Performance view, Kaneza Schaal, KLII, The Under the Radar Festival, Chelsea Factory, 2023. Photo © 2023 Maria Baranova.

The MCA’s On Stage series concludes its 2025 season focused on the theme of lineages with Kaneza Schaal’s KLII.

Schaal is a New York-based artist working in theater, opera, and film. She was named a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow and received a 2021 Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, a Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program Grant, and a 2019 United States Artists Fellowship, among other accolades. Schaal has also presented work at the MCA in the past; her performance Jack &, which took on the measureless damages of being in prison, took the stage in the Edlis Neeson Theater in 2018.

KLII confronts the atrocities and systematic brutality of King Leopold II’s colonial rule of the Congo Free State (1885–1908). It is what the artist describes as an “exorcism” of Leopold, exploring the history of his rule as a vehicle to envision decolonialization and reparation in the present. Schaal’s work draws on multiple artforms to enact this exorcism, and similarly, the subject matter of KLII draws on a number of source texts and references to tell its story. In addition to a monologue written by Christopher Myers, there are several historical sources that underpin KLII, including Mark Twain’s King Leopold’s Soliloquy (1905), a fictional monologue written after Twain’s visit to Congo Free State; Patrice Lumumba’s 1960 independence speech in the Republic of Congo (aka First Congolese Republic); and Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism (1955). Beyond these texts, the performance references opera—including Daniel Auber’s La Muette de Portici (1828), which played a role in the Belgian Revolution in 1830—as well as elements of design and urban history.

KLII is not the only work in which Schaal has sought to resuscitate a lost historic narrative. In 2022–23, Schaal directed the opera Omar, an homage to Omar Ibn Said (1770–1864), a Muslim scholar from present-day Senegal who was enslaved in 1807 and brought to South Carolina. The opera shed new light on a marginalized figure in African scholarship and revisited the history of forced labor and displacement. Schaal also directed William Grant Still’s opera Highway 1, USA (ca. 1940) when it was restaged by Los Angeles Opera in 2024. Still, known as the “Dean of Afro-American Composers” during his lifetime, was a thrice-awarded Guggenheim Fellow and a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance who became the first African American conductor in a major American orchestra. Despite his success, Still’s compositions remain largely unheard. Schaal’s restaging of his work speaks to her interest in reclaiming the canon of Black artists and their history.

Ahead of Schaal’s performance at the MCA, performance intern Gordon Fung explored these key source texts and other references in this online guide, providing background into the cultural, historical, and political allusions at play in the work.

Performance view, Kaneza Schaal, KLII, The Under the Radar Festival, Chelsea Factory, 2023. Photo © 2023 Maria Baranova.

Searching for KLII

King Leopold II of Belgium reigned from 1865 to 1909. Leopold was nicknamed the Builder King in Belgium—a sobriquet referencing the many public buildings and urban projects he commissioned in the new nation, founded only in 1830.

Representations of Leopold can be found all over Belgium. His bronze monuments often depict him as a heroic monarch—sitting astride a horse with military regalia draping his chest and a sword at his side. These homages commemorate a deceptive narrative of the country’s achievements and leadership, given the way that Leopold profited heavily from his genocidal and privatized campaign of brutal and dehumanizing forced labor in the Congo.

Leopold ruled what he named the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. His statement of colonial sovereignty—privately owned by the monarch himself—was predicated on the loss of freedom, and often life, for millions of Congolese. Indeed, Leopold’s colonial project became one of the most disturbing chapters in human history. Founded on the exploitation of natural resources such as ivory and rubber for personal profit, Leopold’s project depended on forced labor—enforced by widespread torture including hand mutilation—to push the quota of rubber collection. Dubbed the “Rubber Terror,” his brutal reign reduced the Congolese population by ten million people (some estimates climb to fifteen million), although he never set foot in Congo.

Leopold’s reign ended in 1908, when the Belgian Parliament voted to annex the Congo as a Belgian colony, transforming it into the Belgian Congo. Only in 1960 did the Congo claim independence from Belgium.

• For a more complete summary of the country’s political history, read more in this chronology of key events in the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo from the 1200s to the present.
• Read “Belgium faces up to its bloody past” from the Guardian.
• Read more about Leopold II on Britannica.

Instead of building another monument to concretize a fictional account, Schaal’s ephemeral performance resuscitates a colonial history that is unknown to many. Without cementing Leopold as a “great ruler,” her work suggests that to understand our present, we must first acquire an understanding of the past. In KLII, Schaal invites us to reckon with a more realistic depiction of this bloody ruler and to move forward with a sense of empowerment.

Kaneza’s performance weaves together many literary references alongside the history of the Congo itself. Below, audience members can access and explore four of these key source texts and learn about other important sources and references in the work.

Mark Twain’s King Leopold’s Soliloquy (1905)

In 1905, Mark Twain published a fictional monologue of King Leopold II as political satire. Twain mockingly narrates Leopold’s justification of his regime’s violence and exploitation in the Congo Free State: he describes his intention to “lift [Congolese] up and dry their tears and fill their bruised hearts with joy and gratitude” by rooting out slavery.[1]

Twain depicts Leopold’s savior complex and paternalistic approach in the Congo as done in the name of God and the exoteric doctrine of Christianity, in which an external savior is needed for the salvation of humanity. In the text, Leopold claims to be supplying education and other resources to the Congolese people in the name of saving them from “savage barbarism.” In reality, he sought every possible way to exploit their labor and natural resources for his own gain.

Drawing on these ideas from Twain’s work alongside the three following texts, Schaal’s monologue as the resurrected king in KLII is delivered at a very high podium. After her character climbs onto this quite literal position of power, Schaal employs sound design to sonically distort and warp the sound of the speech—a subtle challenge the notion of a single patriarchal hero or leader.

• Read Mark Twain’s King Leopold’s Soliloquy.

Patrice Lumumba and the Democratic Republic of the Congo

“The Congo’s independence is a decisive step towards the liberation of the whole African continent,” proclaimed by Patrice Lumumba, the first Congolese Prime Minister.[2] On June 30, 1960, he declared independence from Belgium, forming the Republic of the Congo, which later became the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Both Belgian Congo (the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) and French Congo (the modern-day Republic of the Congo) gained independence in 1960. However, they remain two separate countries as long-lasting civil unrest hindered their union.

Despite Lumumba’s vision and leadership, he was assassinated in a military coup within six months of gaining power. Although he called for the unification of the nation and African unity through the “spirit of friendship,”[3] his political leaning toward socialism made him a perceived enemy in the eyes of Belgium and the United States. As the Cold War continued, the battle of political ideology between capitalism and communism in the West, alongside the former colony’s involvement in mining, eventually led to Lumumba’s political martyrdom, which was aided by Belgium.

In 2002, Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel issued a formal apology, taking “moral responsibility” for Belgium’s passive role in Lumumba’s assassination. It took another 20 years for Belgium to return Lumumba’s only remains, a gold tooth taken by Belgian Police Commissioner Gerard Soete who assisted the disposal of Lumumba’s dismembered body.

In 2020, a year that marks the 60th anniversary of DRC’s independence, Belgium’s King Philippe expressed his “deepest regrets” for the country’s colonization on the DRC through a letter to Félix Tshisekedi, the fifth president of DRC; Philippe reiterated similar sentiment in 2022. Meanwhile, Princess Esméralda of Belgium, a great-grandniece of King Leopold II, called for Belgium to properly repair the relationship with Congolese, recognizing the letter and the removal of statues as first steps but calling on “Belgium and all European former colonial powers [to] face the historical legacy of colonialism and white supremacy to build a fairer society.”[4]

• Read more about Patrice Lumumba on Britannica.
• Read Patrice Lumumba’s 1960 independence speech.
• Read “Patrice Lumumba: Why Belgium is returning a Congolese hero’s golden tooth” by Damian Zane on BBC News.
• Read “Today in History: Belgium acknowledges role in assassinating Congolese leader Lumumba” by Maïthé Chini in the Brussels Times.
• Read more about Stuart A. Reid’s The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination.

Daniel Auber’s La Muette de Portici (1828)

In KLII, Schaal sings an excerpt from Daniel Auber’s La Muette de Portici (1828), a grand, five-act opera that allegedly catalyzed the Belgian Revolution in 1830.

During the short-lived sovereignty of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands between 1815 and 1830, factors such as religious reformation, language policy, and uneven distribution of power led to Belgians’ dissatisfaction. The events leading to its independence began when the Dutch King William I of the Netherlands organized a three-day festival to celebrate his birthday with spectacles including the opera production of La Muette. The opera draws on the Neapolitan Revolt of 1647, led by Masaniello, a Neapolitan fisherman, who revolts against unfair taxation. In KLII, Schaal sings an excerpt of duet between Masaniello and Pietro from Act 2, Scene 2:

Mieux vaut mourir que rester misérable! (Better to die than remain miserable!)

Pour un esclave est-il quelque danger? (Is there any danger for the enslaved?)

Tombe le joug qui nous accable, (Fallen is the yoke that oppresses us,)

Et sous nos coups périsse l’étranger! (And under our strikes perish the                    outsider!)

This portion of the libretto was thought to have inspired the Belgian revolt against the king. On August 25, 1830, the third night of the celebration, widespread riots erupted in Brussels. The subsequent ten-month-long revolution resulted in Belgium’s declared independence from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Leopold I swore his constitutional oath on July 21, 1831, as King of the Belgians. He reigned until his death in 1865, and was succeeded by Leopold II.

• Read “How protests and rebellion created a nation in 1830″ by Tom Vanderstappen in the Brussels Times.
• Listen to the excerpt of Masaniello and Pietro’s aria.

Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism (1955)

KLII also references the poet, playwright, and politician Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism (1955). Césaire’s staple anti-colonial text analyzes historic examples from the colonial period, critically evaluating actions executed by colonizers to expose the mechanisms of dehumanization and injustice.

In the opening of the text, Césaire (b. 1913, Basse-Pointe, Martinique; d. 2008, Fort-de-France, Martinique) writes that “a civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization.”^[5] He continues: “No one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased.”^[6]

Césaire famously described the objectifying effects of colonization as “thingification,”^[7] writing, “between colonizer and colonized there is room only for forced labor, intimidation, pressure, the police . . . [n]o human contact, but relations of domination and submission which turn the colonizing man into a classroom monitor, an army sergeant, a prison guard, a slave driver, and the indigenous man into an instrument of production.”^[8]

Later in his career, Césaire turned his attention to playwriting, publishing Une saison au Congo (1966). The play depicts the Congolese people’s movement towards independence and the final months of Lumumba’s political life. The play was premiered in March 1967 in Brussels by the Théâtre Vivant. It was performed at the Venice Biennale in September the same year.

• Read Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism.
• Read the entry of Aimé Césaire on Britannica.
• Watch Aimé Césaire’s Une saison au Congo.

The Chair as a Symbol of Power and Resistance

In KLII’s stage design, the resurrected King Leopold II—as portrayed by Schaal—rules on his throne amongst passive audience members, who sit on plastic monobloc chairs.

These functional, popular, and affordable chairs are ubiquitous across the globe because of an injection molding technique that enables their inexpensive mass production, but they hold particular meaning in KLII: they are prevalent in open markets in Kinshasa, DRC. Meanwhile, some cities have sought to eliminate the chair. Monobloc’s association with commonality led Basel, Switzerland, to impose a city-wide ban on the chair between 2008 and 2017 as an attempt to safeguard the integrity of cityscape. In KLII, Leopold’s lavishly decorated throne sits in striking contrast to the generic and mass-produced chairs, highlighting the power imbalance between the performer and audience.

• For more on the Monobloc, read “Chair Today, Gone Tomorrow” in Kultur Austausch.

Notes

[1] Mark Twain, King Leopold’s Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule, 2^nd ed. (Boston: The P. R. Warren Co., 1905), 4.

[2] Patrice Lumumba, “Speech at the Ceremony of the Proclamation of the Congo’s independence,” Marxist Internet Archive, accessed March 4, 2025, https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/lumumba/1960/06/independence.htm.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Princess Esmeralda of Belgium, “It’s not just the statues, Belgium must atone for what it did in Congo,” The Brussels Times Magazine, published January 8, 2022, accessed April 10, 2025, https://www.brusselstimes.com/200718/its-not-just-the-statues-belgium-must-atone-for-what-it-did-in-congo.

^[5] Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Joan Pinkham (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 31. Originally published as Discours sur le colonialism by Editions Présence Africaine, 1955.

^[6] Ibid., 39.

^[7] Ibid., 42.

^[8] Ibid.

^[9] From Nicholas Stanley-Price, Talley Mansfield Kirby, and Alessandra Melucco Vaccaro, eds. Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, 1st ed (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 1996), 69. The original article by Alois Riegl, Gesammelte Aufsätze (Augsberg, Vienna: Dr. Benno Filser Verlag, G.m.b.H., 1928), 114–93; was originally published as Der modern Denkmalkultus: Sein Wesen und seine Entstehung (Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1903). Translated by Karin Bruckner with Karen Williams.

^[10] Kaneza Schaal, “On Process, Performance, and Monumentality: Kaneza Schaal with Natacha Nsabimana, moderated by Jane Saks” (Talk, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL, April 13, 2025).