The University of Hawaii at Manoa’s theater and dance department has long been known for producing plays from different cultures, using authentic practices of each. Local audiences have been able to see Kabuki or Noh, or Peking opera, performed by students using the techniques, costuming and set design from Japan and China.
But until the last decade, nothing representing Native Hawaiian theater was staged, despite the culture’s tradition of storytelling, song and dance. Locally, only Kumu Kahua Theatre, founded in 1971, was dedicated to telling stories about Hawaii.
“I realized that our voice wasn’t being represented,” said Tammy Haili‘opua Baker, a student at UH-Manoa in the 1990s and now an associate professor in theater at UH-Manoa.
In 2014, Baker was hired to establish a Native Hawaiian theater program, and since staging its first full-scale production in 2015, the Hana Keaka program has gained widespread acclaim. Noted for its Hawaiian language programming, Hana Keaka has toured throughout the South Pacific. Since the program’s inception, three students have graduated with a Master in Fine Arts.
In 2020, its production “Au‘a ‘la: Holding On” was invited to New York City to perform off-Broadway, a performance that resonated especially with Native American groups. Last year, the Hana Keaka production “He Leo Aloha” won eight regional awards from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, a national theater program involving 18,000 students annually from schools across the country.
An exhibition about the first five plays the Hana Keaka program has produced since it began in 2015 is currently on display at the East-West Center Gallery. In mid-November, the program will stage its newest full-scale production, “Ka ‘Umikumalua o na Po,” a Hawaiian-language adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”
Baker, a Native Hawaiian originally from Kauai, got her bachelor’s degree in theater at UH, with a minor in olelo Hawaii (Hawaiian language). She didn’t think the two would become intertwined when she began working toward her master’s in theater directing in the mid-1990s.
“In my mind, I thought I’d have to be (white) to do (theater),” she said. “So I was embracing that, whether it was Shakespeare, Chekhov, Christopher Durang, Eugene O’Neill.”
Nonetheless, for her master’s thesis, she wrote a play in olelo Hawaii, basing it on the story of the deity Maui. Though it had to be staged at Kamehameha Schools due to scheduling conflicts at UH, the performances were “packed for every performance” and “crowds came out in droves” when it toured other islands, she said.
“People were really moved by seeing this work,” Baker said. “That was when I think the seeds were firmly planted in my mind that we needed to have a program.”
Drawing from the past
Despite that apparent success, it wasn’t until more than a dozen years later, in 2014, that Baker was hired to establish a Hawaiian theater program. It was part of an initiative by then-chancellor Virginia Hinshaw to bring more Native Hawaiian students to Manoa by hiring Hawaiian scholars in different departments throughout the university. Though happy to have the chance to build the program, Baker encountered a degree of skepticism about it.
“I kept getting questions: ‘What is Hana Keaka? Do Hawaiians even do theater?’ ” she said.
Some professors expressed concern that “we’re going to take a loss” on Hana Keaka productions, while another professor proposed folding Hana Keaka into another program, which Baker declined. “I decided that I was going to turn my hands to the soil and let the fruits of my labor speak for itself,” she said.
To give her program some academic heft, Baker pursued a doctorate in Maori and Indigenous studies at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, “hopscotching back and forth” between islands until receiving her Ph.D. in 2020.
Just as important as the degree, however, was the fruit of her research.
“It was an opportunity for me to nerd out and get into the newspaper archives, and get into the old tapes and listen to recordings of kupuna talking about the performances that they remembered,” she said.
Baker turned up accounts of things such as costuming and staging of traditional Hawaiian theater, commentaries akin to critics’ reviews and descriptions of different kinds of theater, ranging from variety shows to opera-like productions.
“Gatherings would happen, basically where downtown Honolulu is, and there would be torches lit, and there would be storytelling, hula and formal oratory that took place,” she said. “There’s a play where they’re having Captain Cook encounter a kanaka for the first time. It’s so exciting to think about what that was, how that materialized on stage.”
Olelo Hawaii
Hana Keaka’s productions have proven popular despite their heavy use of olelo Hawaii, with no subtitling. That differs from the UH theater department’s other culture-based productions, where for example a Chinese script is performed in English but delivered in the elevated vocal style of Peking opera. A comprehensive play guide enables non-olelo Hawaii speakers to follow the story.
Baker compares the experience to Western opera, which is often sung in Italian or German no matter the audience’s native language. “Sometimes we know what’s happening and sometimes we don’t,” she said. “But they’re speaking to our humanity and we’re experiencing those emotions, and that’s what it’s all about.”
She also feels that using supertitles, which is now common in Western opera, would rob attention from the actors. “The performer is not getting your full attention, and that’s what feeds the performer,” she said.
Hana Keaka’s next production, set for Nov. 18 to 20, is a Hawaiian adaptation of several scenes from Shakespeare’s romantic comedy “Twelfth Night.” It provided particular challenges to Iasona Kaper, a student who translated the script and will direct the play.
Kaper is not Native Hawaiian, but he has a bachelor’s and master’s in olelo Hawaii. He thinks there are elements of “Twelfth Night” that will resonate with Hawaii audiences.
“Music is a big part of ‘Twelfth Night,’ ” he said, “and then the play also does a lot of interesting stuff with gender. There’s a lot of gender switching, and so the translation adds an element to that because there’s no gender pronouns in Hawaiian. Just translating took away the whole issue of ‘he/she/they.’ ”
Kaper found it impossible to match Shakespeare’s famous iambic pentameter rhyme structure in olelo Hawaii. Instead, he engaged Hawaiian poetic forms, using colorful metaphors commonly found in newspapers, even in mundane items like weather reports. “A description of ‘It’s cloudy on the mountains’ might be expressed ‘Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa and Haleakala, all wearing their white hats,’ ” he said.
Another Hana Keaka student, Lily Hi‘ilani Okimura, has undergone a journey into her roots through the program. She grew up in Hawaii Kai but “knew nothing about my culture, my family history.” She found that her legacy is one of resistance: one of her great, great grandfathers signed the petition against annexation of Hawaii by the U.S., and one of her great grandfathers was a spokesman for Ota Camp, a Filipino community in Waipahu that fought development of its community in the 1970s.
“Upon being in this program and getting more inspired by my history, I’ve learned that I have family that were very involved in the political sphere here in Hawaii,” said Okimura, who is focusing on acting. “I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t gotten into Hawaiian theater.”
Baker’s daughter, Ka‘iukapo Baker, is currently a student in the Hana Keaka program. She is particularly interested in costuming and has incorporated island themes into some of the outfits she’s designed for its productions. For Hana Keaka’s last production, “Ho‘oilina,” she and local clothing maker Ka‘ano‘i Akaka collaborated on a design aimed at conveying a sense of wealth, since much of the play dealt with the concept of inheritance and money. “The color is green, like money, and land, and then there’s blue to suggest water,” she said.
“Being exposed to Hana Keaka and Hawaiian language especially, it really did solidify myself as kanaka maoli and made me sure of my identity,” she said. “I know what my purpose is, and I know my kuleana and responsibility I have on this Earth, and that is to perpetuate storytelling through Hana Keaka.”
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EXHIBIT
“Hana Keaka: The Art of Hawaiian Theatre at UH Manoa”
At the East-West Center Gallery, 1601 E. West Road
>> Open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays and noon-4 p.m. Sundays, through Jan. 8.
>> Closed Nov. 11, 24, 25; Dec. 23-26; Dec. 30-Jan. 2.
>> Tours will be offered in ‘ olelo Hawaii at 3 p.m. Nov. 13, Dec. 18 and Jan. 8.
SPECIAL EVENTS
>> Panel: “Indigenous Language Theatre” with Apolonia Tamata, Fijian L language expert, University of the South Pacific; and Tammy Haili‘opua Baker, associate professor of Theatre & Hawaiian Theatre Program Director, UH-Manoa. 2-3 p.m. Nov. 13.
>> Performance: “Ka ‘Umikumalua o na Po” (a Hawaiian-language adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”) adapted and directed by graduate student Iasona Kaper. 6 p.m., Nov. 18-19, and 2 p.m. Nov. 20. Reservations required. Info: arts.EastWestCenter.org
>> Script Reading: “Tamoree” by graduate student Ka‘onohiokalae‘alohilohinei “Kala” Muller. 2 p.m. Dec. 18
>> Panel: “Reflections on the UHM Hawaiian Theatre Program” with current and past participants. 2 p.m. Jan. 8
