By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Kahinano, played by Ikaika Hussey, and Kanoelehua, played by Genevieve Shankles, rehearse a scene from "Mohala Ka Lehua."
Hawaiian play
By Burl Burlingame
done in English
Star-BulletinThe Convention Center may not be able to hang its 'okinas straight, but up at the University of Hawaii, Hawaiian has become the third favorite language of choice, after English and Bureaucratese. Tammy Haili'opua Baker's play "Mohala Ka Lehua" opens Saturday as UH's Earle Ernst Lab Theatre "Late Night" production. It's the story of several generations of Hawaiian women and the "kilu," a kind of full-moon rite of passage in which they join their "chosen mates." Sounds like Sadie Hawkins Day.
The play is directed by D. Scott Woods and includes music and hula choreographed by Kekoa Wong of Ka Pa Hula Hawai'i. Baker's script takes the radical step of presenting much of the work in ... English!
It's radical because Baker's earlier pieces are wall-to-wall Hawaiian. In 1995 she founded the all-Hawaiian theater group Ka Halau Hanakeaka (roughly, "school of performing") and she may be the first playwright EVER to wrought plays entirely in Hawaiian.
"I just decided it would be fun to do it, so about three years ago I started writing plays in Hawaiian," said Baker, who, no, is never mistaken for raccoon-eyed evangelist Tammy Faye Baker. "I wanted to combine both my interests, Hawaiian language and theater, and that was the ideal way to do it. And I had just taken a class in playwriting."
Baker is a student in drama and a graduate assistant of Hawaiian at the University.
She takes subject matter from traditional Hawaiian oral stories and casts them in Western play form. Pre-contact Hawaiians didn't have formal dramas, instead using hula and story-telling as performance art. Her first plays were "successful, because the audience responded," and she and Ka Halau Hanakeaka took them to neighbor islands.
She's applying for a grant to take "Mohala Ka Lehua" to the neighbor isles as well, and in May will premiere an all-Hawaiian work, "Maui A Kamalo" (Maui of the Loincloth) at Kamehameha Schools. No word on whether Lokelani Lindsey is editing the script.
"That one deals with some legends about Maui," said Baker. "Mohala Ka Lehua is about two sisters who are interested in the same guy and there is a sibling rivalry ..." and she went on to describe a juicy plot that sounds like a cross between "Melrose Place" and "King Lear."At any rate, Baker "finds it easier to write in Hawaiian than in English. I grew up speaking Hawaiian Creole English, and the directness and flow of Hawaiian is so appealing. When I write in English, though, I find myself slipping back into HCE.
Other Hawaiian-language projects include contributing to Dennis Carroll's upcoming "Way of a God" and last year's "Nanakuli" at Leeward Community College.
"This generation has a lot of interest in Hawaiian, and that interest is growing, hopefully to the point where it could sustain a theater season like any other - except that it would be all in Hawaiian," said Baker.
Can nonspeakers follow it?
"There doesn't seem to be a problem," said Baker. "The physicality of the pieces helps, and there is the dance and music to move things along. We haven't had to try subtitles or broadcasting translations to headsets. We just print a synopsis of the plot in the program, and that seems to do it.
"After all, most people are able to follow opera even if they don't understand the language. They appreciate the beauty of the performance, and the story takes care of itself."
Sibling rivalry
What: "Mohala Ka Lehua," a play by Tammy Haili'opua Baker
