Honolulu Theatre for Youth looks at the "girls can’t do what boys do" issue with its current production of "Suzette Who Set to Sea."

Suzette lives in a village where girls can do almost everything boys can — except build boats and sail out to sea.

"People have certain expectations of little boys and little girls," HTY company actor Maile Holck explained. Holck is joined by two other HTY veterans — Junior Tesoro and Alvin Chan — in telling the story of how Suzette secretly built a boat and showed the villagers that girls can be good sailors.

"That’s all she loves," Holck said. "It’s in her bones, it’s in her legs and she does anything she can from the time she’s a little girl to be near boats and be near the ocean."

Holck said the story is fun and whimsical with Suzette’s experiences in daring to dream and being ready when opportunity calls from the helm of a ship where she is the captain.

Tesoro portrays the first officer, and Chan is the second officer who is new to the ship and can’t understand why the ship’s captain is female.

The cast uses objects from the ship to tell Suzette’s story. "We get whatever we can from the ship to tell the story — anything you would find on a ship," Holck said.

"Anything" includes water.

"People get wet" as the story is told, she said, without revealing the circumstances in detail. But audience members can rest assured that only the actors get wet.

The set, created by HTY set designer Joe "Josette" Dodd, is an important part of the story. "It’s a ship, so it comes out into the audience, the whole front of the ship with the sail ropes going up and the mast in the back," Holck said.

The play is the work of Tasmanian playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer and was developed in conjunction with the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego and HTY Artistic Director Eric Johnson.

"Suzette" is the latest in a series of new children’s theater shows that Johnson and HTY staffers have developed while working with playwrights and theater groups outside Hawaii. Holck said is it "exciting and fun" to be so deeply involved in the development process.

"In the last year we’ve done so much devising," she said. "This is a finished script, but we all had, in the very beginning, a place in its development."

A free study guide with suggestions for story-related activities, including how to build your own juice-box sailboat, is available at www.hty­web.org.