Celebrating Our 39th Season With New Plays and Popular Revivals
Plays about life in Hawai`i
Plays by Hawaii’s playwrights
Plays for Hawaii’s people
Another great season of plays of local interest and origin.
This season Kumu Kahua presents two world premieres, a Hawaii premiere, a revival of the popular Maui the Demigod, and the stage debut of a teleplay originally produced on the PBS series Wine and Roses. The world premieres include a play about statehood developed by Kumu Kahua and several local playwrights and poets, and a collection of short plays by Eric Yokomori. With this outstanding season, our commitment to producing plays for and about Hawai`i continues.
Kumu Kahua's 39th Season of Plays For and About Hawai`i 2009-2010
conceived by Fat Ulu Productions & Kumu Kahua Theatre
In conjunction with Fat Ulu Productions, an organization dedicated to creating and strengthening communities through the literary arts (it recently produced a series of collaborative poetry performances), Kumu Kahua presents a collection of monologues, scenes and stories written by Hawaii playwrights, poets and storytellers. With the intention of presenting multiple perspectives on the issue of statehood in Hawaii – including political, historical and sociological – in early 2009 Kumu and Fat Ulu invited local writers to create short, personal expressions and reflections on any chosen aspect of statehood. These pieces were first read by the writers or actors to an audience, then revised by the writers and refined and organized by producers at Kumu. The result is a significant, and refreshingly different addition to both the commercial promotion and journalistic reportage that has been celebrating Hawaii's 50th anniversary of statehood.
Originally produced last year by the East West Players in Los Angeles, Voices From Okinawa tells the story of Kama Hutchins, an American of Okinawan ancestry who teaches English to local Okinawans. He eschews traditional ESL teaching methods to have his students relate personal stories to the class. As the tales are told, the young students reveal their attitudes toward the American soldiers stationed on the island. (For years, Okinawans have protested the U.S. presence, citing crime, rape and the destruction of Okinawan culture.) From his students, as well as from his shaman great-aunt, Kama learns a great deal about his own cultural heritage. The drama blends with comedy as Kama is compelled to defend his teaching methods to the school principal. The playwright's father left Okinawa in 1907, along with three brothers, and became a pineapple grower on Maui. The brothers eventually returned to Okinawa, but Shirota's family remained.
In a one-act play (House Lights) and six short plays (under one title, Prolonged Sunlight), playwright Yokomori explores the human condition via dramatic surrealism and theater of the absurd. Intense aberrant behavior is the norm as characters confront one another in strange situations. In one of the short plays, Joey tells Crystal that he possesses a magic rock into which he has placed all of his love, and no one can take it away from him. Crystal finds her own rock, and the battle begins. In another, an author attempts to convince a children's book publisher to buy his x-rated manuscript. In another, a bizarre cocaine deal goes bad. In House Lights, Saul Peacock, an actor whose credits are merely those of a perennial extra ("It's the hardest role to play, really. You never draw attention to yourself."), is invited to dinner at the dysfunctional Roget household and gives them all a lesson in the difference between illusion and reality.
Sundays 2pm: January 17, 24, 31; February *14, 2010
(No show Sunday, February 7, because of the Superbowl)
American Sign Language Interpretation performance available upon request
Maui the Demigod
adapted by Gary L. Balfantz with oli & hula created by Kahoa Malalis
A narrative theatre adaptation of Steven Goldsberry's Maui the Demigod: An Epic Novel of Mythical Hawai`i, Balfantz's play was first produced by Kumu Kahua in 1991 and toured the islands in 1992. The play incorporates hula, chant and storytelling in bringing the many myths of Maui to the stage – including his miraculous birth, prank-filled childhood, and heroic deeds of manhood such as slowing down the pace of the sun and pulling an island from the depths of the sea. Characters in the play include Maui's older brothers Loke, Waena and Ki`i, his mother Hina, god of the ocean Kanaloa and the sun La. Many versions exist of the same stories because, as the Kupuna says, "Maui was a great man. There were many who said he did things that he did not do. Many liars whom we cannot blame for their wonderful lies."
American Sign Language Interpretation performance available upon request
The Hilo Massacre
by Tremayne Tamayose for the Center for Labor Education & Research, University of Hawai‘i (now at West O‘ahu) for broadcast as part of the Center’s Rice & Roses series on Hawaii Public Television
On August 1, 1938, to express their solidarity with striking workers in Honolulu, more than 200 Big Island men and women belonging to different labor unions (including longshoremen, warehousemen, teamsters, garbage collectors, quarry workers and the ladies auxiliary) attempted peacefully to demonstrate against the arrival of a ship from Oahu. They were met by a force of over 70 police officers who tear-gassed, hosed and fired riot guns into the crowd. Fifty of the demonstrators were hospitalized. Based in part on research from labor historian William J. Puette's book The Hilo Massacre: Hawaii's Bloody Monday, Tremaine Tamayose's teleplay, originally produced for the PBS labor history series Rice and Roses, infuses historical events with personal stories of the workers, police and politicians. It is brought to the theatrical stage for the first time by Kumu Kahua Theatre.
Kumu Kahua's 100-seat playhouse puts you at the heart of the drama. And
with well over 100 plays to our credit, our reputation attracts some of
Hawaii's most talented actors, directors, playwrights, designers and other
theater artists and technicians.
The Statehood Project
Voices from Okinawa
House Lights & Prolonged Sunlight 
Maui the Demigod 
The Hilo Massacre