Born in 1987, Michael Disanka lives and works in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. He graduated in 2011 from the National Institute of the Arts in Kinshasa, and the same year co-founded the d’Art-d’Art Collective. He began working with KVS in Brussels and met the Congolese director Dieudonné Niangouna with whom he took part in several festivals including Connexion Kin 2012 and 2013, Mantsina sur scène 2012 (Brazzaville) and Theaterformen 2013 (Hanover).
Michael Disanka has directed several shows including Yoka mboda, which he both wrote and directed, Illusion by professor Mumbal’ikie, Le rêve, Village fou by Koffi Kwahule, Parole de femme by Annie Leclerc, L’herbe qui souffre by Michel Torrekens and Solo Dios Basta by Père Constantin. He did readings of his own texts and texts by other authors in Diseurs de textes presented by the d’Art d’Art Collective in various places around Kinshasa. In 2016 he began working on the project 00243 with the Waza Art Centre in Lubumbashi, presenting the show in 2017 in Lusaka and Lubumbashi. In 2018 he was invited by Les Bancs Publics (Marseille) to work on the project 40 et 7000 façons de mourir. In 2018 the world premiere of Sept mouvements Congo was presented at the Connexion BXL festival.
He was invited to Brussels by Adeline Rosenstein to work on Laboratoire Poison 3 in April 2020 and by Kaserne Basel for a residency in May 2020. As a guest of the Plateforme Contemporaine cultural association in Kinshasa, Michael Disanka has run several theatre workshops for schoolchildren. He is an associate of Studios Kabako run by Faustin Linyekula.
