 Hi, welcome to Think Tech. We are raising public awareness about technology, energy, diversity, and globalism. This show is center stage. I'm your host, Donna Blanchard, proud managing director of Kumakuhua Theater. And we are coming to you live from Pioneer Plaza in the heart of downtown Honolulu, very near Kumakuhua Theater. We're doing something a little bit different, a little special today. Normally, I like to bring in artists and people involved in the arts to talk about the process behind that art. Today, and I wanted to do this partially because today is the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. There's a lot going on in the world. We've got the holiday season upon us. We've just come out of a very different, difficult election. It was different, too. And I think it's a good time to talk about the power of art itself in our lives. And I brought in to wonderful guests, I can't imagine two better people to talk about this. It is Eden Lee Murray, who is a professor of theater at HPU, Hawaii Pacific University, and her husband, Roger Jelanek, who is the executive director of the Hawaii Book and Music Festival. Welcome to center stage. Thank you so much. I've had you both on here individually to talk about your art. I was just saying earlier, I've never seen the two of you in the same room before. You are so devastatingly busy. It's nice to see you two together. And I thank you for coming in to have this conversation. I think it's a nice time of year to talk about not only the happy stories that go along with art, but to help us all remember it really is important to take that time to step back and reflect and relax a little bit and play. It's part of our health. Right? Thank you for having us. Thank you so much. Absolutely. So when I suggested to Eden Lee the other day, maybe we could just talk about some stories about the power of art in our lives. She said, oh, really? Well, I don't like she had just a plethora of stories ready to go, which got me very excited. I'm anxious to hear. So we can start with the very youngest in our audiences. While I was at the Hawaii Theater Center, as of no longer since August, but it was my my decision to try and reach out to the youngest demographic, the preschoolers. And how can we make arts relevant to them? And one story I have that just tickles me forever is the first time I let the three year olds into the theater, there was a bunch of teachers. I forget what the show was, but there were a bunch of teachers waiting with their babies outside the Hawaii Theater. And I went up to one of the teachers and I said, you know, these little guys are awfully small. And I said, do you think I'm reaching beyond what they're capable of by bringing them into this very special place, this big place, this place that's full of art, anywhere you want to look, it's full of art, right? And the teacher looked at me and she had tears in her eyes and she said, look around you and all these little kids are little bitties with their thumbs going like crazy on their little little tiny games, right, and their little tiny phones. And she goes, they need this in their lives more than anything else I can tell you. And I said, I'll take your word for it. And then I put my hand in the hand of the little three year old that I was leading his line into the theater. We walked into the auditorium and as soon as he got into that vast for a three year old space, he stopped in his tracks and he looked all around his eyes as big as saucers and he went, this is so beautiful. This is three years old. He didn't say cool, he didn't say neat, he didn't say sharp, he said beautiful. So kids at that level, it's not too young to reach out to them to begin making them aware of the beauty in their lives so that we can offer them as one story. That's a beautiful story. That's nice to know that a child that age, and isn't it amazing that a child that age would just stop in their tracks and recognize that. I had something similar happen with, I was singing in a wedding and luckily for me I was in a Ukrainian cathedral in Chicago, a big beautiful with the three archways cathedral and the acoustics of a building like that do amazing things for anyone's voice and there were very little kids who were born out of their gourds and as soon as I started singing they just stopped. And I'm not saying that my voice is all that amazing but the acoustics in such a beautiful place just, they recognized it, it resonated with them somehow, the beauty of that. And what Roger does with Book and Music Festival, you get all this amazing feedback from all ages from the community who come to celebrate. It's interesting, we do an onsite survey and about 10% of the 10 days fill it out and easily the most prevalent comment is we bring our kids here to expose them to books and music and performance because we do a lot of performance out there and that's obviously very valuable to them. Oh yeah, because it's a lot for families to, excuse me, pack everyone up in the car and bring them out and you know get everything together. It's clearly, excuse me, really important to them. Well and over the 12 years that you've done this festival what's come through increasingly over the years is that people look forward to it as a family experience to share that together. It's not just, oh let's let the kids go off to the festival. It's grandparents, tutus, tutukanis and all the way down to the stroller set, you know. It's a safe, beautiful place so it works very well. I'm sorry, can we take a break for a moment? I'm sorry. Aloha, we invite you to join us on our Keys to Success show which is live on the ThinkTech live streaming network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. My name is Danilia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. We are so happy to be here. I'm Jay Fidel, this is Research in Minoa. We care so much about this show. It's put on by HIGP, the Lions Institute of Geophysics and Planetology and Pete McKinnon-Smark is here to tell us about it. What do you think about this show Pete? Oh I think it's great Jay. Basically, we know that the UH Minoa does a variety of research endeavours and Research in Minoa, the program, actually gives us a way of communicating to the general public some of the exciting things that HIGP is involved in. Myself, I cover some of the space activities whether it's the moon and Mars or the outer solar system, but my colleagues from the institute also come and talk about undersea exploration, looking at earthquakes or trying to use GPS in creative manners. So this particular program is excellent because it provides us with an easy way to talk to the community. It's also because it is placed on YouTube. It's also a good resource for the future. So we're even thinking about using it for some of our student classes as well as just showing some of the people who are involved in the research on the mainland, the kinds of activities which Hawaii is conducting. Wish I'd said that. That's Pete McGinnis-Mar from HIGP. I'm Jay Fiedel. Come around for research in Minoa at Monday at one o'clock every single week. You'll see. Come back soon. Bye, Pete. Looking to energize your Friday afternoon? Tune in to Stand the Energy Man at 12 noon. Aloha Friday here on Big Tech Hawaii. Aloha! This is Rez McJackal, University of Hawaii football team under Rolovitch is going to kick butt this season. In case you didn't understand me, University of Hawaii football team is going to kick butt under Rolovitch this season. So be sure to follow us on Think Tech Hawaii and Iwachi Top. I'll be at every game. And remember, aloha! You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, 25 talk shows by 25 dedicated hosts every week, helping us to explore and understand the issues and events in and affecting our state. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. What do we talk? OK, we're back and I apologize for my cough. I'm just getting over that cold that is going around the island, but hopefully we'll be better now. So let's pick up where we left off. The Book and Music Festival and the family is coming in for that. Well, we are almost a third of our programming is for kids. So and most of that is about performance, whether it's reading aloud or whether it's singing, dancing and various venues. And they obviously have a terrific time there, but they're just excited to be there with performance. Yeah, do you find that you see the same families come back year after year? Well, this is interesting because we're always asked how many people attend, which is impossible because it's free admission and you can go in from anywhere. And we're beginning to find that people stay longer each year. Some even come both days. So how do you count them? So to answer your question, it's really impossible to tell. But you know that you see the same families. I mean, in the survey they are asked, are you likely to come back again? And 95% say yes, yes, we're very likely. Well, if that was true, then we would literally see them every year. Yeah. And I have no idea. Well, Edenley, you've seen the same kids year after year in your class. I've watched them grow up. And what's really been fun, I was going to just share one thing with Roger, which is to say the lovely thing about an experience like that, as well as a live theater experience inside a venue, is that people take away something that they've seen and they talk amongst themselves. The families actually communicate as they go home. I love it when something happens. For example, with one of my children's productions, if it shouldn't happen, the kids, it's become a sort of a catch point. We say, you know what they're going to say on the way home? The grandparents, shut up, Ethel, it's art. We'll talk about it on the way home and figure it out, right? The kids that I have this year in my Hawaii theater, well, no, it's now the HPU Young Actors Ensemble, the high school kids, all but one have trained with me from the junior ensemble through the intermediate ensemble through now the high school ensemble. And it is just so exciting for me, both as an artist and as an educator, to watch how these kids have grown and how they not only are becoming terrific young professionals, but they also, when there is, for example, I said the one who's come in fresh from having not trained with me before, the others made it their business to whirlpool her in so that she didn't have sort of, oh, I'm over here and I'm on an island. And that's part of what art can do. It's all, I mean, that's one of the things I love about theater. It's so all embracing. If you carry your weight, there is no door that won't open for you. I'm sure you found that out, you know. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I feel like the arts, or I definitely, theater involves all of the important disciplines that you have to learn to be a valuable member of our society and a good person, right? And I would, and reading, reading is the root of all of it. And you also have, is it Jelenech Murray or Murray, Jelenech Murray. Jelenech Murray. Jelenech Murray. Literary agency. Reading is where it all began for me, certainly. You can't audition for a show if you can't read the script and understand what these words mean emotionally to the person speaking them. But something extra happens when you get people who are really good at reading out loud, particularly their actors or just expert readers. It just transforms experience for the kids, you know? So there's always this dynamic that it's a book festival as a kind of a paradox, because reading is actually a very private experience for the most part. People who are readers also like to hear the real voices of the authors or the voices of the readers being read. It just amplifies the experience. Also, the parallels between literature and theater are not that, I mean, they're kind of astonishing, which is to say, and this is something that both young writers and young actors have to learn, which is you can write what you feel, you can act what you feel, but ultimately your job is to take care of the person who's either reading or watching. You are, I won't say strictly an entertainer, but it is your responsibility to carry that story forward. And the sooner actors learn that, the sooner we dispel with the drama queen behavior. It's not about, it's about the audience. It always surprises many of my literary clients when we get into a manuscript. And I try to explain to them that their business is to make every phrase, every sentence, every paragraph, sell, that they are manipulated. It's a highly manipulative form, right? That's not to say it doesn't involve truth, but you have to deliver. You have to deliver, you have to shape it. You have to be aware of the reader. You have to make them stay with you otherwise. There are so many distractions available now. People just go away. And that's a very hard lesson for most writers to... I bet, it's also real. If they look at it the way I try to get them to look at it, it's a very comforting thing for young performers of any age, which is to say, when an audience person comes through the door of a theater, I don't care how old they are chronologically, they are five years old, and they come through with, tell me a story. I want you to have the authority. I want you to take me by my lapel, sit me down, and say, listen to the story, I have to tell you. There's no room for stage fright. There's no room for, oh God, I'm one of my hands doing it. And as soon as actors realize that and they understand the power that they have, if they step up and accept it, the audience will love them. And that is again, it's a real, it's a wonderful life lesson for performers. Oh yeah. Well now I would imagine as a performer and a director, myself, I understand we are delivering a story to the audience, but I benefit so much myself. There is a great deal of benefit to the artist. And if I may be just a little revealing here, I work with a therapist who has had me write some poems, not for anyone else to read, just for me to express myself. And I'm amazed what comes out when you give yourself license. And I've heard this mostly from a one poet when I interviewed Jamie Gussman, an amazing poet here on the island, but also write songwriters, talk about this emotive experience to just write and get it out. And you don't know that maybe you're never gonna want anybody to read some of this, but it's a way of sort of cleansing the soul. And I think it's important that we think about our audiences and recognize what it does for us. Jamie does the book festival social media messaging. I have to look to see if they're poetry. Oh, she's amazing. And you know what? Now she has her baby's close to a year old. And I asked her if it's changed her poetry because some of her poetry, it's beautiful, but it was dark. And I asked her if it's changed at all, she's now gone back to edit some things that she hadn't finished before the baby. And it's brighter. Wow. Her work is brighter. And I think it gives me goosebumps to think about that, that having that child in her life has changed the art that is coming from her. And I'm sure it's still amazing work, but it's just a brighter side of her. I think what you're talking about in terms of the first draft, the free write that just put it out there, right? In literature, that's your first draft. And it's your job as a writer to really get to the truth, to get to your truth, to get to and to get it out. Same as for an actor, your first rehearsals, your first rehearsal process is to find the emotional truth of those characters. But then you have to flip it. If you decide to go on with a song, if you decide to go on with a poem, if you decide like the Bridget Gray who does amazing performance poetry, when she gets her stuff out first and then she picks the ones that she wants to run with and then it's about rewrite and rewrite and tightening and cleaning and polishing so that then when you deliver it, it's a done piece. Yes. But I was just telling my HPU kids this fall because they were saying, well, we have to do rehearsal. I mean, we have to feel this stuff. And I'm saying yes, it's your job as you work to explore your personhood and the personhood of the character. You should do free writes for your character, right? And get all of that out. But ultimately, it's not your job to feel up on that stage. It's your job to make your audience feel. And to find out through rehearsals what's gonna get there. Yes, that discovery period is amazing. And I love it that you have so many authors read their own work at the Book and Music Festival because if I had an opportunity to hear Ken Follett read his work, I mean, I love his novels but to hear him or John Irving what they would bring to it, it would be so fascinating. It's always true. Sometimes it's disastrous. Oh. It was wonderful. Are you thinking of Gardner? Gardner McKay did the stories on the wind and he would read them for HPR and because his writing was so layered and so nuanced and he knew what the meaning behind every phrase was, you got exactly what was intended. And after they brought someone else in when Gardner passed, the words were just as beautiful. The phrases were just as beautiful but the person reading is beautiful and the letterless as his voice was didn't understand all of the layers that Gardner as the writer had intended. Yeah. It's a different piece of work, you know? Yeah, that's a lot of a big body of work to carry across with every word. Oh, okay, we're gonna take a quick break, a second quick break. Thank you very much for sticking with me through my little coughing spasm. We will be right back with center stage on the Think Tech Hawaii digital network. Hi, I'm Chris Letham with Think Tech Hawaii and I'd like to ask you to come watch my show, The Economy and You, each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Aloha, Kako. I'm Marsha Joyner and I'm inviting you to navigate the journey. We are discussing the end of life options and we would really love to have you every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m., right here. Aloha, I am Reg Baker and I am the host of Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30 in the Think Tech studios in downtown Honolulu. We highlight successful stories about businesses and individuals and learn their secrets to success. I hope you can join us on our next show on Thursday at 2 o'clock. Until then, Aloha. Hi, we're back and we're live. This is center stage on the Think Tech Hawaii digital network and I want to tell you a few things about the show. If you would ever like to join us in our studio audience here in Pioneer Plaza in the heart of downtown Honolulu, you may do that. Just email Jay at thinktechhawaii.com, that's J-A-Y. And if you would ever like to join in the conversation, you may do so. You can tweet us at Think Tech H-I and if you have any suggestions for people you would really love to see on the show, please send me a message on Twitter. I'm at, it's all about Donna. On Twitter it is all about Donna. Not on the stage. The stage, it's not all about Donna. We're talking with Roger Jellinick and Eden Lee Murray and Eden Lee do you have some more stories? I see your notepad over there you've been glancing at. I'm just checking though, the one in terms of the impact at performance and performance arts. Two things, first of all the teachers that when I was working with Alliance for Drama Education we would go into classrooms across the island for all ages, right? Just the group that George Kahn runs bases out of Farrington High School and what the teachers would say over and over again is how disenfranchised the children were becoming. They're on their laptops, they're on their little phones again and I'm looking at that and I'm listening to that and the administrators were saying it as well and I'm going, yeah, well why are you taking away one of the principal things that gets kids out of themselves and into community and that's theater. You can't do theater by yourself. You need the people to build the sets. You need the people to write the plays. You need the people to rehearse. You need the people to play. You need the directors. And all of that, the thing that's so exciting for kids, because I love watching the effect that theater has on kids, there's such a thrill and a release of responsibility to be able to play their part in something that is so much bigger than themselves that wouldn't happen if they weren't all part of it. And when I was working with Farrington I remember George was telling me, because there's a significant or there has been over time gang problems. We were talking always, we would smile about the parallels between kids who want to belong to something that gives them identity and lets them take risks and that's a gang, right? That's also theater. You belong to something that's greater than yourself. You're out there on stage. You have to take a risk. People are counting on you and you have to come through when the chips are down. And they can do it safely in theater. That's community. Yeah, at the festival on the stage at Italy's MCO, we have groups from, there are about a half a dozen public schools on Oahu that are centers for performing arts, that specialize in performing arts. And we always invite them to bring a show, a half hour show to the festival. So half of them, one of them, about two days is actually dedicated to Farrington. And they are hugely excited to come and they get great audience. They bring their audience as well. Oh yeah, exactly. But they just take great pleasure in sharing who they are and at events like that with a lot of people that they've never seen before. Yeah, I remember the feeling being very young in a church pageant was my first time on stage and recognizing that this is bigger than me. I'm here for them too, you know? And it's transformative. You have, I don't know if you're aware of the story, my guest last week was one of your students who is now working with you, Brienne. Brienne? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. She has decided to go into teaching. She's thinking very seriously about going into teaching because she's had such a wonderful time working with the students and she recognized that she has that within herself. That's what art has done that for her. I watched her grow up since she was, she was in my first junior ensemble and she was so shy that her eyes were just on the floor the whole time. And her little sister, who is also a spitfire, watched her when we did the demo class for the parents and the little sister was just saying there was two years too young to be apart but she insisted on coming in the next year. And the two of them have grown up together and Brienne, but I loved about Brienne and this has happened with several of my kids. As they move along in the program, I ask that they move into the assistant directorship of the two junior ensembles so that they can, by teaching themselves, learn how far they've come. And so she next year, I would imagine, she's gonna graduate this year and if she's still on Island, I will ask her to be the AD, the assistant director for the high school group, which my Malia Wessel and Frank Coffey along the way, the first year they're out of the group, they have kind of separation anxiety so I'd love to bring them back in. And again, they get to see what they've learned when they turn around and try to teach it and Brienne is a very good teacher. She's very empathetic, oops, I hit my mic. She's very empathetic, she's very gentle and she really looks, I mean, she really sees well. Well, then you see differently when you know you're going to be teaching. That's very true, yeah. Roger, have you seen, we just have a couple minutes left, have you seen, have you been surprised by sales of any of the books that you sell? Has there been something that you didn't think really was going to reach an audience, but surprisingly did? Oh, here and here in Hawaii, well, not. Anywhere. Anywhere? Am I surprised? No, it's my job as a literary agent not to be surprised. Oh, to always say, oh, okay, okay. I just wondered if there was something that you didn't expect to have the, well, I bet J.K. Rowling didn't expect your books to. I think one that bridges both things about this phenomenon of Hamilton is extraordinary. We're trying to institute what they call a big read for Hawaii. And one of the candidates that I wanted to bring in was Ron Chernow, who wrote the original book for Hamilton that the musical was based on. That's, he's on the New York Times bestseller list now, years and years after he wrote the book, probably because of the success of the play. I'm sure, oh yeah. But that's a surprising subject, both on stage and as a book to be such a success. Right, that it just has resonated with everyone. So much. Thank you both very much for being here and sharing your stories. I appreciate it. I think that it's easy when we, I do this. I manage a theater for goodness sake and sometimes I don't get out to see shows. I don't take the time that I know that I need to appreciate art and I hope, I'm sure you've helped us remind everybody that it really is, it's like taking a daily vitamin to be involved in art and literature somehow in your life. Where do you see it or you do it? Right, right, seeing it, reading it, just absorbing it is as important as doing it. If you have doing it in your soul, then you gotta do it. You gotta find a way to do it, whether it's writing or acting or singing or. So thank you for being here. Thank you very much for being here and thanks again for getting through my little coughing fit with me. There's a few people in the studio I would like to thank. Rich Prentice, our floor manager who's right over there, thanks, Rich. Zuri Bender, our studio overlord who is in my ear. Jay Fidel, who somehow manages to put this all together. And back at the Kumu Office, Wilka Haley, who brought me this during one of the breaks. Thank you, Wil.