Sanlele. It sounds like the punch line to a local-style riddle: “What would you get if you crossed an ukulele with an Okinawan instrument?”

But the sanlele is no joke. It’s a three-string musical instrument with the body and fretted neck of an ukulele and the large tuning pegs of an Okinawan sanshin. It is tuned like a sanshin and played like an ukulele. And, thanks to playwright Lee A. Tonouchi, the sanlele is reaching larger audiences in Honolulu this month in his new play, “UchinaAloha,” at Kumu Kahua Theatre.

Tonouchi discovered the sanlele several years ago on a blog about Okinawan culture. He describes it as a “cultural metaphor.”

“I thought it was a pretty neat instrument,” Tonouchi said on the set of “UchinaAloha.” “If I was young and could learn an instrument, that’s the one I’d want to learn because it represents who I am: local (and) Okinawan.”

The sanlele has a small but important part in Tonouchi’s story about an Okinawan-American college dropout who would rather play the ukulele and is a very reluctant participant in his grandfather’s sanshin classes. Things change a bit when an Okinawan exchange student named Maria Ginoza comes to live with the pair. The Okinawan character gives the story a romantic angle and allows Tonouchi — who is known as “Da Pidgin Guerilla” — to deftly bring into the story some of the political and cultural experiences shared by Okinawans and Native Hawaiians.

Kenny Kusaka, a versatile actor who says he isn’t much of a musician, plays the sanlele in the show. The song he strums, “Mensole Hawaii,” was written for the play by Jake Shimabukuro, Hawaii’s most famous ukulele virtuoso. The sanlele Kusaka plays it on is on loan from Grant “Sandaa” Murata, a Hawaii-born sanshin instructor and unabashed booster of the sanlele.

THE sanlele’s history began in Okinawa in the late 1990s when a Peruvian-born Okinawan musician asked craftsmen known for their high-end sanshin to design an instrument that combined the sounds of the ukulele and sanshin. It took the craftsmen 10 years of experimentation to create the sanlele, which made its debut in 2008.

Tonouchi, Murata and the Okinawan craftsmen are hoping Shimabukuro will start playing sanlele in his concerts and record an entire CD with it. For now, Hawaii can hear Kusaka play sanlele through Oct. 2 at Kumu Kahua. For showtimes and ticket information, visit kumukahua.org or call 536-4441.