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Hey, kids, let’s
By Cynthia Oi
put on a show
Star-BulletinTHE problem is this thing in the middle of the stage.
None of the 20 or so people rehearsing at Kumu Kahua Theatre on a Saturday morning knows what to make of it.
It looks like a mound of lava rock poking through a disc of plexi-glass. Three steel cables bolted floor to ceiling mark its perimeter.
Sheilah Sealey peers at it, arms crossed over her chest. Can it be moved?
No. It's part of the set for "Spur," Kumu Kahua's current production, and because the play she's directing is for one show only, the thing stays.
She purses her lips, whips back her tangled ponytail and adjusts.
"We'll make believe it's a statue," she tells her cast. "Or maybe it should be a wishing well."
Ah, the imagination and flexibility of youth. Each of the four acts that make up "Gen X Local," which will be staged Monday, must work around the thing. They don't whine; they just deal with it. After all, the point is to put on a show and their desire to perform breaks down any problems.
"Gen X Local" is the brainchild of Lee Tonouchi, dubbed "Da Pidgin Guerrilla" for his advocacy of using pidgin English in all aspects of life. The Kapiolani Community College instructor who is also an editor for "Hybolics" magazine and Bamboo Ridge, wanted to put on a show that featured young people. He put out a call for talent and the result is this "multi-genre performance event," as he describes it.Genre No. 1 is the play, "Townie Country," by first-time playwright Ryan Senaga, 27, with Sealey, 29, in her directorial debut.
No. 2 is a modern dance piece choreographed and performed by Fay Ann Chun, 27.
Genre No. 3 combines the slam poetry, rap and martial arts talents of Ronda Mapuana Hayashi, a k a Katana, who is 20 years old.
No. 4 is poetry reading by Lisa Linn Kanae, 39.
This is the rehearsal order, but Tonouchi isn't sure of the line up for the real show yet. The run-through will help him set up the presentation.
"Dis the first time for me," Tonouchi says of his producer role.
His biggest fear is that no one will come to see "Lee's baby," as his friends teasingly call it. But with youthful bravado, he jokes about how it will be so good there aren't going to be enough seats for everyone.
Tonouchi says that although the show is aimed at young people, he hopes to attract a broad audience, "like da kine fuddy-duddy stuffy theatergoers, da uncles and aunties ... and da shout-it-out-loud young-folk crowd sitting all side by side forming wot can only be tot of as one spontaneous community."
But back to reality.
"Does anybody have jumper cables?" Sealey asks. It's for a prop, not to juice a dead battery. "No? OK. We'll just fake it."
Although a directorial novice, Sealey seems to have a firm grip on the job. She runs the actors through the script, giving advice, calling out missed cues and generally wrangling them across the stage.
When they are done, she calls out, "I'd like to meet for a few minutes with the cast outside. Please."
Playwright Senaga has arrived and Sealey button-holes him. She tells him she likes his play, but wants to make some suggestions. After a few minutes, he has to stop her. "I need to get some scratch paper," he says, sounding overwhelmed, but not displeased.
"I have paper right here," she says, and whips out a sheet along with lists -- cast list, phone lists, rehearsal schedules -- from a tote bag and thrusts them at him.
Meanwhile, the cast has gathered outside in a courtyard facing Merchant Street to wait for Sealey. Some smoke, others nibble on chocolate eclairs or sip Slurpees.
Nara Springer, a Yale drama graduate and an actor with Honolulu Theatre for Youth, is fooling around with her friend BullDog, another HTY actor who is making a film with former newscaster Lee Cataluna. Springer is glad to be part of the show.
"You know, I'm only 22, so as far as identifying with Generation X, that's not me. But I liked reading this play because (the plot) is a typical thing for young people and it's so important to show that," she says.
"It's not quite the subject for more academic types. But I can associate more with this than a Becket play and other young people can, too."
Back inside, Chun, who has been limbering up and stretching in almost every available space in the theater, begins her dance.
Unlike the play people who made the lava lump part of their performance, she ignores it, moving through the space it leaves.
A founding member and assistant artistic director for the Bluewater Dance Company, she calls herself very motivated. "I go beyond what's necessary," she says, her demeanor leaving no doubt about her sincerity.
The Gen X thing isn't a big deal with her. "I wasn't one of those 6-year-olds who took ballet. I didn't start dancing until I was a freshman in college, until I was 18. This age issue isn't one with me."
After Chun is done, Hayashi, her guitarist and drummer set up under the watchful eyes of her promoter, Lisa Sutter, and her mother, Genma Neal.
On stage, Hayashi is Katana, the slam poet, rap artist and hip-hop entertainer. Off stage she is Ronda, a soft-faced young woman barely out of her teens who still refers to the producer as "Mr. Tonouchi."
On stage, the girlishness disappears, her expression stiffens. She swirls nunchaku to open her performance, then come her words, hard and heavy, cynical.
"I'll probably never understand the man, I'll probably never understand the man," she repeats, her rap cutting through male-female relationships. The lava rock thing becomes her fulcrum as she steps and hops around the stage.
Through the rehearsal, Sutter urges her on, correcting her when she makes a mistake. Neal sits quietly until the end. Then arms up, purple polyester pants shimmying, she demonstrates how she'd like her daughter to move in the Tahitian number.
Sutter tells Katana she did good and Ronda re-inhabits Hayashi, a wide, fresh smile erasing the tough facade.
"I love to entertain and perform," she says joyfully.
"I saw the call for the show, but I didn't send anything in. But I was doing poetry at KCC and Mr. Tonouchi saw me and asked me to do this. Fate took over."
She hopes to "make it," but takes a realistic view, too. "I'm studying sociology and psychology to have something to fall back on," she says, "but I hope I don't have to."
Like the others in the show, she values this time in her life.
"It's good to be here and now."
One-night stand
What: Gen X Local
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