The most celebrated annual hula competition hasn’t had a live audience in Hilo since 2019, but that changes today.

While the general public was not able to buy tickets to the 59th annual Merrie Monarch Festival due to continued COVID-19 concerns, a limited number of seats for participating halau and their families and a reduced number of complimentary tickets for longstanding supporters and sponsors was available for competition that gets underway tonight through Saturday.

On Wednesday, however, the public began patronizing the festival’s ever-popular arts and crafts fair at the Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium and Butler Buildings. The fair features locally made aloha wear, woodwork, photography, jewelry, food, music, skin care products and official Merrie Monarch merchandise such as T-shirts, hoodies and programs.

“It’s been two years since the last crafts fair,” said Kegan Miura, co-chair of the volunteer committee for the Merrie Monarch Festival’s arts and crafts event. “It’s been a challenge with COVID to put on a fair of this size. We’ve worked with community partners and Queen’s (Medical Center) to come up with a plan before all of the COVID restrictions kind of dropped.”

“Setting up (Tuesday) morning, the vendors were so happy to see each other,” Miura said. “Everyone’s excited to get back to it. I think we’ll see a lot of neighbor island shoppers and Big Island shoppers. It’s a great thing for our economy.”

Although the pre-­pandemic numbers of shoppers ranged from 5,000 to 10,000 daily and roughly 170 vendors, organizers don’t expect those numbers this year.

However, more than 130 of Hawaii’s best artisans will present their work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. today, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.

Hiipoi Kanahele, 59, traveled from Niihau to sell precious Niihau shell lei, from one to four strands, and a variety of earrings.

“This is the first day, and we are finding local people that know Niihau shells coming to see if they can buy a piece for themselves or some are coming to buy for their mother, for Mother’s Day, which is coming up,” she said Wednesday in a telephone interview.

The Merrie Monarch Festival is an important way to support not just the vendors and artisans like herself, but the entire community on Niihau, she said. “Niihau no more job, so they go pick up shell.”

It usually takes nearly a year to collect, sort, create the holes, string and tie a single strand, Kanahele said, adding she often has to ask other ohana to see if they have a certain color shell to fill an order quickly.

Other than the festival, where sales can fluctuate wildly, her sales are out of a small store on Kauai and by word of mouth.

“At the Merrie Monarch, if a halau dances with the shell lei, and they see it, that makes them buy,” Kanahele said. “Especially the Japanese people, if they see the halau using, and they are in a halau in Japan, the whole halau would buy the same thing.”

The 2021 competition was held in June and televised in early July, but with no live audience. The 2020 festival was canceled.

Opening day sales at the fair Wednesday were down from years past, Kanahele said, and she’s seen only a few Japanese nationals. The crowd is mostly local. Many have lost their jobs, but they keep coming back to her booth because they want to buy.

Also by telephone Wednesday, jewelry maker Donna Lee Cockett, 75, from Lihue, said: “I’m doing about a third of what I did four years ago. The economy is really hurting. People don’t have a lot of money. I have customers coming back. It’s wonderful, but the crowd is not the same, about a fourth of the normal crowd.

“There’s no bumping shoulders,” she said. “It’s still good. Our economy needs all the help we can get.”

Cockett said she has occupied the same space at the fair for 15 of the 18 years she’s been a vendor there. She once weaved lauhala, and now weaves threads of gold and silver into bracelets. About 8% to 10% of her annual sales are from the Merrie Monarch, she said.

Linda Schweitzer, a lauhala weaver from Pahoa, said she has been weaving papale (hats) strictly from Hawaiian lauhala since the early 1990s as a way to regain arm strength after being stricken with breast cancer.

“For me, I live on the Big Island, and this is the only opportunity small-business people have to do a show,” she said by telephone. “There’s no other avenue. For us, Merrie Monarch is a county-sponsored event, and it’s really good for the small-business people here to get out and show their wares.”

The 74-year-old says she travels to Oahu for the Made in Hawaii Festival, but is slowing down and doesn’t want to travel much anymore.

While food trucks are on-site, festival organizers encourage patronizing the concession stands as well as purchasing official festival apparel and merchandise, which will go directly toward supporting the festival.

Also, festival organizers for the first time charged $5 a ticket for the Wednesday evening Ho‘ike, usually a free performance featuring Halau O Kekuhi, a Hilo halau with the Edith Kanaka‘ole Foundation, and dancers from around the world.

The festival’s COVID-19 protocols require attendees at the fair to wear a mask.

Those unable to attend in person may support the festival by going to merrie monarch.com to purchase festival apparel, bags and posters.