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Lopaka Kapanui's "A Pagan Tattooed Savage" began as a poem that he presented as a member of the music/spoken-word poetry ensemble Poets Without a Net. His pithy observations on racial stereotypes next became one of the strongest and most sharply focused pieces on the group's self-titled album. The poem is now the theme and the kernel of an ambitious, lengthy one-man play co-written by Kapanui and fellow Poets member Robert Pennybacker. It is being presented through Saturday as part of Tim Bostock's "On the Edge" Pacific Island Theatre series at the ARTS at Marks Garage. Cultures clash in
clever vignettes"A Pagan Tattoed Savage": Repeats at 8 p.m. today through Sunday at The ARTS at Marks Garage, 1159 Nuuanu Ave. Tickets: $15. Call 528-0506.Review by John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.comKapanui opens with the poem in its original form. Tourists who come here knowing nothing of Hawaiian culture may see native people simply as happy hula girls and tattooed savages, Kapanui says, but why do so many Hawaii residents find it odd for a native Hawaiian to be a Buddhist, enjoy Shakespeare and speak standard English?
It's a great start. It's also the strongest piece in the show. The vignettes that follow explore variations of it with varying degrees of success.
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A native Hawaiian tour bus driver and a wealthy female Caucasian executive from the mainland meet in Waikiki, engage in an improbably long argument but finally find common ground. A Hawaiian nationalist is appalled by the discovery that one of her sovereignty comrades is a Buddhist but eventually decides that's OK. A transvestite recalls the traumas of his life in a lengthy apology at his mother's grave. Economic powerlessness torments an unemployed Hawaiian man, and he internalizes his rage until he can barely resist the urge to slam his unsympathetic wife's head through the wall. His wife -- oblivious to his perception of her role in his plight -- reminisces about better times until she can barely resist the urge to smash his head with a frying pan.Most of these vignettes run longer than necessary. Characterization is another problem. Several pieces require Kapanui to portray two or more characters. Kapanui moves between characters crisply, but there isn't always enough difference to clearly distinguish them.
Kapanui's best character work is in a backstage beef between two Hawaiian actors. One enjoys Shakespeare and speaks formal English. The other is a pidgin speaker who contemptuously dismisses "haole" theater as being "for panties" and argues that true Hawaiians read the works of local playwrights and Haunani-Kay Trask. Kapanui starts with the contrasting dialects and adds distinct postures and attitudes to create two well-visualized characters.
Where Kapanui and Pennybacker excel as playwrights is in flavoring the pieces with references to local icons (Jack Lord, Don Ho, George Helm, Trask, Andy Bumatai), familiar places (Papakolea, the Glades, Villa Roma), and such bits and pieces of local culture as male hula dancers who perform in "one-flap malos."
Kapanui and Pennybacker also offer acid-etched glimpses of culture wars on the UH-Manoa campus and elsewhere. The two playwrights prove as critical of self-important Hawaiian cultural snobs as they are of the tourists and others who view Hawaiians as being nothing more than "spouse-abusing, Aala Park-living, City and County refuse truck-driving, 99 years on the homeland list-waiting" tattooed savages.
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