By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Joni Albao, center, performs at Banyans in Pearl Harbor
in the annual "Mardi Gras Follies."
Special to the Star-Bulletin
Arsenio passed the audition and won a showcase role. Then producer Jack Cione asked Susan to audition.
"He's very persuasive. Before I knew it I was in the show, too," she said.
Arsenio had a showcase solo; Susan danced in feathers, bangles and bows. That was a year ago. When the annual fund-raiser opens this weekend as "Mardi Gras Follies '97" at the Pearl Harbor Officers Club, they'll be there and seen in several of Cione's big numbers.
The Tejadas are dancing together in a jitterbug number. Arsenio has a spot singing "When My Baby Goes to Rio," and Susan appears in four production numbers. She's doing double duty as make-up director as well.
Other featured performers include Mary Barbosa, Howard Bishop, Sing-Sing Bliss, Jackie Horton, Veronica Kelley, "Sailor of the Year" Tony Prestidge, and Cione's latest discovery, "The Showgirls of the Next Century," a chorus line of six 7-year-olds. "They'll steal the show," Cione predicts.
"The first time I was up there I felt a little self conscious but it's really a lot of fun," Susan says, adding that some costumes designed by Cione and Bill Doherty were more revealing than she'd expected.
"I saw one of them and asked where was the rest of it," she recalls. "I asked about another one and they said it wasn't finished. I thought there was going to be a wrap-around skirt but it turned out the final piece was a cape - there was no skirt!"
The Tejadas are one of several couples juggling the demands of work and family responsibilities to appear in the follies; their daughter, Gissele, says she supports her parents' interest in show business.
"It's been hectic. Some days I work late (at the Honolulu Academy of Arts) and then go straight to rehearsal. We've been getting home so late that most nights we only get three or four hours sleep," Susan says.
Arsenio agrees. "It's a tough schedule, but it feels good to know that we're doing something to contribute to the community by doing something we enjoy."
The follies began in 1955 as a costume ball and dinner dance presented by the Pearl Harbor Officers Wives Club. When Cione was invited to guest direct the show in 1985 he added the lavish costumes he'd made for his '70s Waikiki productions, "Follies Polynesia" and "Oriental Fantasy." "Mardi Gras Follies" has been a G-rated extravaganza ever since.
What: Mardi Gras Follies '97