Huikaʻi Moʻo ʻŌlelo: Theatre in Hawai’i During the 21st Century

Abstract

Based on fifty interviews with actors, playwrights, directors, and producers, “Huikaʻi Moʻo ʻŌlelo: Theatre in Hawai’i During the 21st Century” provides a history of Hawaiʻi’s historic community theatres, analyzes Hawaiian and Asian authored plays, Hawaiian language theatre production, and productions of Broadway musicals. The Hawaiian part of the title, meaning story with multiple perspectives, articulates the project’s goal of showcasing the artistic and cultural diversity of Hawaiʻi. This dissertation introduces various theatre forms of contemporary Hawaiʻi and uses theatre as a framework to understand the impact of historical events on Hawaiʻi’s people. I argue that community theatre production embodies the afterlife of the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, Hawaiʻi’s plantation economy, and settler colonialism. The first of the three case studies, “The Theatre of Victoria Nālani Kneubuhl and Tammy Haili‘ōpua Baker: Staging the Afterlife of Hawaiʻi’s Annexation” analyzes the work of two renowned Hawaiian playwrights and their depictions of Hawaiʻi’s last reigning monarch, Queen Lili’uokalani. The second case study, “The Repertoire of Kumu Kahua Theatre: Staging the Afterlife of Hawaiʻi’s Plantations” examines Hawaiʻi’s third oldest community theatre, and the first and only known theatre company to produce Local theatre, a genre unique to Hawaiʻi which represents the experiences of Hawaiʻi residents who call themselves Locals. The final case study, “Diamond Head Theatre, the Broadway of the Pacific: The Afterlife of the Haole in Hawaiʻi” explores the connections between white settlement and the establishment of Hawaiʻi’s oldest community theatre and the third oldest community theatre in the United States, its 2015 production of South Pacific featuring Loretta Ables Sayre, who played the character of Bloody Mary in the 2007 Broadway revival of South Pacific. This study continues a paradigm shift initiated by scholars of Asian American and Native Hawaiian studies that removes theatre of Hawaiʻi as a subset of Asian American Pacific Islander theatre and firmly positions it as its own distinct genre and dedicated area of academic study. Through theatre, Hawaiʻi’s status as a politically contested island state, its multicultural history and post-colonial formations of race, as related but distinct from the continental United States, are illuminated.