Seeing the Play Kamau

Remember the play we told you about the other day, in which Richard’s grandson Kapono (a.k.a. Christian Pa) played the lead?

The play is called Kamau, written by Alani Apio, and was performed up at Jason Scott Lee’s Ulua Theatre up in Volcano. Richard and June went to Opening Night, and I saw it on Friday night with a friend.

I don’t know if I can describe it adequately, except to say: Wow. What a powerful story and performance.

Kamau is the story of three male cousins who live in their family’s long-time home at the beach, where two of them fish for their living and the younger one, Alika (played by Kapono), is just out of high school and working as a tour guide. It tells the story of what happens when the land is sold to a developer who plans to build a hotel. Alika’s boss at the development company gets them more time to move, and finagles them some money to relocate. He convinces the company to offer the one cousin, Jason Scott Lee’s character Michael (a fisherman who cares for the family’s traditional fishing shrine) a job showing tourists how to fish.

Mostly it tells the story of two cultures colliding. And what I liked about it (and also found frustrating – but how true to life it is) was that it didn’t provide any pat, tidy answers. Life doesn’t always offer those up, does it?

Nobody was wholly a good guy or a bad guy. Everything didn’t magically work out at the end. But somehow, they found a way to carry on anyway. The play name, “Kamau” means “to carry on.”

It is really a powerful play. Thought-provoking, emotional and wrenching. Afterward, when we saw Jason Scott Lee standing outside, I told him how powerful I found it, and he laughed when I said I felt “wrung out.” I really did.

The acting was really very good. We were so impressed. Kapono starts at the University of Hawai‘i in the fall and is majoring in Performing Arts. I can imagine him doing very well.

We wrote here once about how Richard’s wife June, always wanted perform and “go on the road.” When she, Richard and Kapono were in New York City they saw lots of Broadway plays.

Maybe one day it will be Kapono up on that stage.

– posted by Leslie Lang

Comments

[Sandra]

I saw the play the second weekend (Thursday through Sunday, the final performance); powerful and moving! The entire cast was excellent, Kapono is definitely a young man to keep an eye on, very talented!

I put in my 2 cents to the director to stage the sequels....

[richard]

June and I were at the last performance too. It was gut wrenching but very good. I kept telling myself that is not our grandson up there it is somepne else. Of course it wasn't, it was Alika up there. Thanks for requesting the sequels. We would love to see it.