The play ran three hours. Still, when it was over, the audience wouldn’t leave. They wanted more.
So they sang — the audience and the huge cast, together — song after song, until finally settling on “Hawaii Aloha,” which brought enough of a feeling of closure so that people could, slowly, reluctantly, start to move toward the exits.
On Sunday, the University of Hawaii Manoa Department of Theater and Dance presented the last performance of the play ‘Au ‘A ‘Ia: Holding On, a Hana Keaka production written and directed by professor Tammy Hailiopua Baker and performed mostly in Hawaiian with some English.
Every seat of the 620-capacity Kennedy Theater was taken. A huge line to get in the building wrapped around the side of the theater, down the grass and around to the back parking lot. Some standbys waited at the ticket window hoping for no-shows so that they could get those seats. Parking around the theater was full, so people were parking way down by the athletic department and walking up. Word had gotten out that this was a performance not to be missed.
To briefly summarize what was an epic play: Four UH Hawaiian Language students delve into the archives of Hawaiian language newspapers for a class assignment. As they do their research, the historical events come alive. The director took her time letting the story unfold, but always coming back to the theme of Aloha ‘Aina, the love Hawaiians have for the land.
One particularly stunning moment was in a scene about the work of the Protect Kahoolawe Ohana in the 1970s. As the cast sang Mele o Kahoolawe, that familiar song of protest, out of the audience stepped Loretta Ritte, one of the founders of the movement that stopped the military’s bombing of the island. Ritte danced a hula describing the love for that land. There could not have been a dry eye in the house.
The plot worked up to present day and the Protect Mauna Kea movement, which put into perspective the historical significance of our time. The action on stage had to pause while the audience members lifted their hands and shouted, “ku kia‘i mauna!” again and again. This was not a protest event or a demonstration. This was not a march down Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki. This was in a theater on the UH Manoa campus filled with a quiet crowd of Sunday matineegoers. It was a spontaneous outpouring in response to a performance that had found its perfect moment in time.
The takeaways from this play are many, but among them are these: Those who fight to preserve Hawaiian lands are remembered as heroes; the Aloha Aina movement extends far beyond marches and protest banners and deep into the heart of the University of Hawaii; and TMT does not have the exclusive claim to furthering learning and exploration, as this was a brand new play full of new ideas, with a large, predominantly Hawaiian-speaking cast and audience who understood every word.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
