Kumu Kahua Theatre’S 35TH ANNAVERSERY Season presents FIVE plays FOR THE PEOPLE OF HAWI‘I
HONOLULU, HI Celebrating its 35th anniversary, Kumu Kahua Theatre will present a wide-ranging offering of premiere productions and popular revivals. The premieres include a historical drama set on a Big Island sugar plantation, a tale of Samoan immigrants in New Zealand, and a contemporary story about how a computer disrupts the lives of a local family. The revivals are a popular musical comedy and a bittersweet play about Japanese war brides in America. With this outstanding season, Kumu Kahua Theatre continues its commitment to producing plays for and about Hawai‘i.
The season opens with Tea by Velina Hasu Houston. Four Japanese women, all post-World War II immigrants with American servicemen husbands, meet at the home of a fifth, who has committed suicide. They clean up the house, drink tea together, and come to know each other and the dead woman, who haunts the play as a restless spirit. “Without being tough, they are strong,” says playwright Houston. “Without being weak, they are gentle. Without being aggressive, they are survivors.” First produced by Kumu in 1990, Tea’s new production opens in August 2005.
In Dennis Carroll’s Age Sex Location, four generations of a local family confront the complexities and perils of cyberspace. When a computer is brought home to help daughter Janine with her job, everyone wants to log on. But the family’s existing problemsfinancial troubles, Alzheimer’s, parent-child conflictonly get more intense in the world of Internet gambling and online chat-room dating. A four-person “Compuchorus” calls out Internet jargon, pop-up advertising and Instant Messages, as the computer becomes a complex and sinister character. A world premiere, Age Sex Location opens in October 2005.
With book and lyrics by Lee Cataluna and music by Sean T. C. O’Malley Ulua: The Musical deals with life, love, and fishing on Maui. Local boy Kayden Asiu leaves his job, his Soloflex, and his fiancée Lylas on O`ahu to explore life’s options on Maui. Butchie and Clyson, two co-workers, introduce him to the joys of all-night ulua fishing. But Lylas follows him to Maui, Butchie’s fiancée gets upset, and eventually the women follow their men to the ulua, and the sea. First staged by Kumu in 1999, this musical comedy comes to the intimate KKT stage for the first time. Ulua: The Musical opens in January 2006.
In the words of its playwright Albert Wendt, The Songmaker’s Chair introduces audiences to “the lives of those courageous migrant families who have made Auckland and Aotearoa their home.” A story of conflict, continuity, and change in three generations of an extended Samoan family, this play enjoyed sold-out houses during its recent world premiere productions in New Zealand. The first full length-play by one of the foremost Pacific novelists and essayists, The Songmaker’s Chair opens in March 2006.
Based on a true story, Eric Anderson’s Another Heaven tells a tale of racial conflict, ambition, and greed in late nineteenth-century Hawai`i. Katsu Goto, owner of a general store, tries to help the Japanese plantation workers stand up for their rights against their foreman and the plantation owner. Violence ensues, and an investigator from Honolulu comes looking for evidence that others would rather keep buried. This historical drama won the Kumu Kahua Playwriting Competition’s Hawai‘i Prize in 2001. Another Heaven opens in May 2006.
Kumu Kahua's 100-seat playhouse puts you at the heart of the drama. With well over 100 plays to its credit, KKT’s reputation attracts some of Hawaii's most talented actors, directors, playwrights, designers and theater artists and technicians. For more information about individual shows, or becoming a Season Subscriber, call 536-4222, or write to kumukahuatheatre@verizon.net.
Kumu Kahua productions are being supported by the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts celebrating more than thirty years of culture and the arts in Hawai‘i (with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts); the Mayor’s Office of Culture and the Arts, Mufi Hannemann, Mayor; The Hawai‘i Community Foundation; and Foundations, Businesses and Patrons.
