 Aloha, welcome to Talk Story with John Whitehead. Today's guest is a person that I have known for years and years. He's a famous reporter, in fact, he's in charge, I guess, of the Maui Bureau for the Star Advertiser. But more importantly, why he's here, he's a playwright. And he wrote one of what I think will be an exciting play. I thought it would be fun to see what's happening in our local art community. So welcome, Gary. This is Gary Kapola. Thanks, John. How are you? Good. Thanks for having me. This is so great because as you know, we have, you have been covering events in Hawaii forever. Right. I've even covered you quite a bit. And see, you know, you kind of, this has given me a chance to ask the questions and say, yeah, yeah, and it's fun to be here, you know. Now, you, as I said, you're in charge of the Maui Bureau. Right. Actually, I was working as the Maui Bureau Chief for many years, and then what happened is they shut the Bureau down, so they, I'm working here now, although I'm covering quite a few of the Maui events and doing some environmental reporting and whatever they want me to do. Sometimes I'll do some investigations as well. Oh, great. And so way back, well actually, I first met you when we were much younger, and you were taking photographs and things of people protesting and doing things with government, and then later on with, when I was in office. Right. I remember that limousine ride from Kauai to Wailuku, in Lahaina, when we were talking about Hawaiian homestead and the need for developing or giving Hawaiians a chance to homestead in Kula. Right, right, right. And then I was really pleased to see that you went ahead and did something about that. Well, that was fun, you know, that was what was interesting about our conversations over the years. And that is that you really had a close connection with Native Hawaiian community, but also just in general with the, I guess you would call them the local aloha'aina communities. Right, I've done quite a bit of work, you know, I fly on my own dime, I used to fly on my own dime to go to meetings on Molokai when residents would be up in arms about something. Every once in a while I get a great story because of that. I remember one time Walter Ritty was saying something like, oh, those guys that, you know, they're sand mining illegally and nobody's doing anything about it. What a story that was. And then I said, wait a minute, so where are they sand mining? And he said, oh, by the road and da, da, da, da. So I said, okay, let me check it out. So the next day in the morning I drove by and a lady was hanging laundry. And I stopped and I said, have you seen a truck carrying sand? And she says, oh yeah, they come by over here and they wet it down and then they go on their way like that. Yeah, that was a big story. And I asked her, yeah, what time do they do that? And then so she said, oh, they come about seven o'clock. So seven o'clock I'm with my zoom lens and everything and sure enough the truck comes and I follow them to where they're actually dumping the sand at a concrete place and then I followed them back into Molokai Ranch. And then I found out later on that they didn't have a permit to do it. Yeah, there was some heavy fines. And then they stopped it. And that area, this has happened more than once. But in this particular instance, they stopped them and I don't know if they find them, but that was at Momi and now it's a natural area preserve. Yeah, well, I found them. It was a heavy fine. So yeah, that was... Okay, so why are we here today is you wrote a play. Yeah, I'm just... So give us the background, like first give us a background of the star you wrote about and then maybe tell us a little bit of how you got to do that. It's historically based. It's about a Hawaiian cowboy named Kaluwai Ko'olau who grew up in the late 1800s and he was married and he had a son and he had a son contracted leprosy at a certain point. What's the name of the play first? The legend of Ko'olau. The legend of Ko'olau. So Ko'olau is the person's name. Yes, Kaluwai Ko'olau. And he was from the island of Kaua'i and he grew up in Kekaha, Kekaha, Kaua'i. So well, eventually we'll put the poster of the play up there whenever we can. But in the meantime, okay, so he grew up on Kaua'i. He had a family. He was a cowboy. He was... Right. He was an ordinary cowboy. He was a marksman. People knew that he was a good hunter. He was a good hunter and a marksman. Yeah. And he worked as a foreman for a couple of branches over there too, like criminal fore and cowboys and things like that. So and he went to missionary school till he was 17, like his wife. So he not only spoke a lot. About when? 1893. Right about the time of the just before the overthrow. Before the overthrow of the monarchy. He contracted leprosy and rather than force him to go to Kalapapa, you know, they the isolated peninsula on the island of Molokai, he decided he wanted to go into Kalalau Valley where there was a small leper colony already. And so he went there. But the deputy sheriff wanted to take him to Kalapapa. And he told the deputy sheriff, if you come in, I'm going to shoot you. And the sheriff did and he killed the deputy sheriff. And then the deputy sheriff was related to the missionary family. And also the government that had just overthrown the queen felt very threatened by that. Because of course, you know, the overthrow of the queen was. And then he might have sparked the rebellion. Yeah. So they declared martial law. You know, this is an exciting thing because even I over the years, I heard about that. So they declared martial law. And they brought they shipped out more than 30 soldiers with a crup cannon. Wow. Yeah. And they brought him to Kalalau Valley along with more than 20 sheriffs, deputy sheriffs. And they tried to capture him. But he was up in the heights. So it's like a Rambo kind of thing, right? Yeah. You know, it's not interesting. Well, actually, there's so many interesting points and why I really appreciate your being here. I think most people may not be aware anymore of what a what a what a devastating alternative going through Kalapapa was way back when and the mystery, you know, it's really interesting. But one of the first places actually, when after I was governor and I met you was that when I when I came into office, there was a protest going on with the patients. The plan was to move the patients out of Kalapapa and bring them back to Hawaii and a cycle in Pearl City, if I remember. And they were they were refusing to do it. They didn't want to do it. They didn't want to go. The Kalapapa at that time was their home. I don't know if you remember that. It's totally understandable. I mean, you know, after being uprooted the way they were, you know, they had to lead their family. There wasn't much communication. So the people of Kalapapa, of course, were like their family. Right. And the back, I guess in the 1800s back then, the remedy for for leprosy was basically to isolate people. And so they took people from across the island. I mean, it was horrible. You can give us a sense of what it was like. The Hawaiians, if you translated one way of the Hawaiians translated it was the living dead. Okay. Okay. Well, we there's a TV program, you know, that does that. And in some respects, the way they treat it, the patients resembles that, doesn't it? Living living grave. That's where they all grave. Living grave. Yeah. I think that, you know, there have been a lot of stories like Father Damian. Right. And but the resistance to going there was more than just that. I thought, you know, in my mind from looking at the research, it was institutional racism. I mean, there are a lot of people who went there, but you didn't see white people generally going there at the time. Okay. Okay. You didn't see white people going into plantation fields to work. Right. Right. You know. And so there are other accommodations. There were other, there were other accommodation. They would, from what I understand, they would maybe live in an isolated area where the family could reach them on, but they'd remain on the same island. Right. Right. So these kind of accommodations could be made, but it was when it came to the Hawaiians and other races like that, a lot of times they insisted on force migrating them. Perhaps because, and to some degree, you know, the, I've heard this, that some people actually didn't have leprosy. It became a reason to maybe confiscate land. Oh, really? In the case of Kolao, you know, that would, that would be the norm routine that would happen. So in the case of Kolao, what, especially when he resisted. When you resisted, they took the confiscated property. They confiscated the property as part of the punishment, and to, they say, well, we're confiscating the property to pay for your capture or something. You know, we're going to get through his story. I mean, there is a real story there, but I want to create for the audience the ambience, you know, what was really at stake in Hawaii. So you had this government agency that was tasked with finding people who were lepers. Right. And unless you could have some kind of special accommodation somewhere, you were sort of hauled off to Kalaapapa. It's correct. It's correct. And when that happened, I mean, I've read records, for example, of how they would just throw people in the water and make them, let them swim to shore because there was no, I mean, what did you discover? I mean, what was... Well, just what you discovered, I think there was that sense of abandonment, of just forced isolation. Well, could their family go with them? For a while, they were allowing some of the family to go, but by the time... This story comes about. This story unfolded, and the answer's no. And that was part of the issue, too. Okay. The family wanted, and the family wanted to have the mom go with them, and they wouldn't allow it. Okay. So this is the one they were... So this story takes place when we're talking of the main character is a Kauai cowboy, a shop shooter. So this is like the Wild Wild West, you know? Paniola. Paniola. Yeah. He was highly respected as a cowboy, too. But the story embraces that whole sense of being a cowboy, and being out in the range and gone from the family and what happens when you come back. And a hunter. And a hunter, too. So this was not some guy you would just go up there and grab, right? You would not want to pick on somebody like this. I think he surprised a lot of people, and that's why he's a folk legend, because the army could not capture him. Right. I mean, you're going to tell us all about this, but you know, the times where this was like in the 1880s, 1890s, right about the transition when Hawaii was, when the overthrow of the Queen... There's a tremendous amount of decimation, too, in terms of diseases. And I think the play covers a bit of it, because when you have a decimation of your own ohana... Well, I'll tell you what the statistics tell us about that, that depending on whose numbers you want to use, that they were between anywhere from one million to three million people living at the time of Cook's arrival. Let's take a million, and at the time of the census in 1890, right about then, it was something like 40,000 Hawaiians left out of a million. That's a lot of people dying. That's a lot of people dying. It's a lot of people who had oral histories and knew where their lands were who died. Okay. Okay. And a lot of times that's a thing like, you know, you notice how sometimes like when you have sugarcane fields and suddenly people want to sell it, the owners want to sell the sugarcane fields, it's actually, they announced that the land, they don't actually have ownership of the land, they don't have any deeds, so they have to clear the title. Right. And the land actually belongs to a guy who was a Hawaiian who got the land through the Mahelei, and so any of their descendants, please come and clean the land or... Okay. So this is the era in which you're writing this story about this Hawaiian cowboy on Kauai. Right. And well, we'll be going in for a break very shortly, and people, if we're going to come back and we're going to talk more, this time we're going to get into the actual story because I want people to get the context of how powerful a moment in history this was. By the way, if you want to call us, our number is 415-871-2474. Hi. I'm Donna Blanchard. I'm a host of Center Stage here on Think Tech. On Center Stage, I talk with really amazing artistic guests about what they do, how they do it, and the most important point, why they do it. I think, I hope, the show is inspirational for everyone. I know it's always inspirational for me. I'm also the managing director of Kumakuhua Theater, which is right next door, and I happen to have with me now Will Kahelei, who is an artist. We just finished a conversation. I hope you can catch on Center Stage. We work together at Kumakuhua Theater. Why should people come over there? Because it's a great place to see plays written by local playwrights. Why should people watch this show? Because it's cool and it's great things to know every week, and because you are a very cool hostess. Oh, that's perfect. Thank you. Give me my money. Aloha. Aloha, and welcome back to Talk Story with John Wahee. Our guest this afternoon has an interesting story. He's actually quite a renowned newspaper reporter. He's written a play about an actual legendary historical figure from the island of Kauai that we just discussed. The play takes part at one of the most transitional moments in Hawaii's history. This is right in the late 1880s, early 90s. It's about the time, well, the overthrow occurs during the time of this. There's a lot of turmoil and a lot of alienation of their own culture and a land. At that time, you know, you had the Benet Constitution that preceded the overthrow of the monarchy by several years. A situation where quite a few people lost their ability to vote. And then you had the decimation of the population where they lost their ability to recall where their lands or ancestral lands were. And you have the expansion of various sugar cane fields and other kinds of businesses into areas where frankly lands were unoccupied but perhaps still owned by someone else. Well, so this is the time period. This is the time period. So tell us the story. The legend of Ko'olaw. Well, Ko'olaw, you know, was educated in missionary schools along with his wife. And then he became, he worked for a ranch, he worked for a couple of other ranches, Knudsen and Gay. And he contracted leprosy in the 1890s, early 1890s. And his son did as well. So how did that happen? That remains kind of a mystery. But in the play, it becomes such that the son's birth was difficult. They had a stillborn in the first attempt at getting a child. And so he turned to a physician to help him, rather than a kahuna priest had been called, but that hadn't worked out. And in exchange, the physician asked him to help hunt lepers for him because they wanted to get the lepers and isolate them. And that was the normal medical practice, the horrendous practice of isolating people, going after them, capturing them. But the doctor, I'm assuming in this story that the doctor actually thought he was doing something beneficial. The doctors did. And they felt like the only solution was isolation. So they would actually go and examine the people and then report them to the board of health. Deputy Shrest would come and arrest them or take them to Kalapata. But they had to find them first. So they used this cowboy, this person, this man of the soils and all that, and to go and hunt this down. And in the play, what happens is that he gets leprosy in the end as well. Because I think that as outlined, what happens is that he has to associate with people who have leprosy. He wants to respect the traditions and things like that. So when he did it, he didn't just go grab somebody and haul it. I mean, he did it in sort of the Hawaiian way. So there was a lot of ho-pono-pono talking and then he would bring these people up. And eventually, he gets leprosy, his son gets leprosy, and then the play gets exciting. And then they decide to go to Kalalau Valley, which is a very remote section on North Kauai. And it took about back then, if you went by coast, it took about three days to get there. And if you went the other way by mountain, it was kind of treacherous. But that's the way he went. That's how he went. He knew the way like that, so he took that way. And they lived in the valley. And he had warned the deputy sheriff who wanted to take him to Kalalau, not to come into the valley, otherwise he would kill him. And the deputy sheriff, despite others, including I think the sheriff in Honolulu warning him not to go into the valley at that point, he decided to do it. And he was, this deputy sheriff was a member of the, I guess, the people who overthrew the queen, right? He was... Of the same family, right? Yeah. He was married to the missionary family. He was married to the daughter of a missionary. And so when he died, he was killed, they really... The missionary families, the provisional government. The provisional government stepped it up by sending something like more than 30 soldiers and a corrupt cannon aboard a ship and then enlisted more than 20 deputy sheriffs to try and capture what Hawaiian... Did it declare martial law in Waimian in certain areas around there? Martial law. Yeah. So this is the provisional government in Honolulu which had overthrown the queen. Right. It declares martial law and sends all of these soldiers and deputies over to capture Kualaau. Right. And yours mentioned something about the reason for this, one of the reasons was the fact that they were afraid this would provoke a rebellion, right? Yeah. It became obvious to me that that was what was happening once you begin to read the newspaper accounts and things because that was the subtext of that era, you know? Lettio Kalani surrendered to the United States government. Right. Because she thought that the U.S. government would give it back like the British did. Right. Right. And that didn't happen. Yeah. That's exactly right. And so it was a very peaceful... So that's an interesting point. So the queen had surrendered to the U.S. government, not the provisional government. No. And not the provisional government. No. She didn't recognize the provisional government. And so they were afraid that this guy that could, you know, just go in the mountains and survive and that's... And there was this argument going around, too, where, you know, that people were beginning to say, well, if the Marines hadn't landed, you wouldn't have been able to take over the government. Right, right. So from my own interpretation of it all, this is where they were going to prove that they could do it on their own. Oh, I got it. I got it. So this is in the story. This is the story. This is the play. Well, to some degree it is. Right, right, right. You know, the subtext of it all. Well, they didn't prove that they could. Because he couldn't be captured. He couldn't be captured. They went after one Hawaiian and they couldn't get him. Well, you know why, I knew it was, well, it was, and what about his son? What happened to his son? His son died eventually and so did he. Right. But even he died free. He died free. He died free. You know what was interesting about this story? Because the first time I heard it, I heard, because this is, you know, and it was a kind of well-known story. Just when the landings were being done on Kaho'olavi, there was this idea of, you know, going out in the forest, standing out, you know, and like my cousin, Walter, maybe. Walter's a hunter. He's a good hunter, too. Yeah, well, this kind of story. And so in a way, it may not have happened then, but it definitely, this legend was used as the justification for direct action. He did arouse the people. He did. Maybe 80 years later, but they got aroused. Yeah, and the whole sense of it is that in the culture of Hawaiians and the local people have a great appreciation for nature in many ways. I mean, Hawaiians have many different terms for just waves alone because you recognize what these waves can do when you're surfing. And of course, the wind and everything else. So in a wilderness situation, these people have already been acculturated into hunting and living off the land and everything. Walter, just an aside, told me the reason why they couldn't capture him was because Walter guys were actually tracking them. I bet you that was what was happening in this with Koalau. I bet you it was that kind of thing. It wasn't just, it's not just running or running, they were probably playing cat and mouse. There's an epiphany inside that whole thing where he realizes that what he should do is mirror nature. So this is now a play, right? When I heard that people that go to this play end up, there's a lot of comedy moments of happiness in it, and you captured that, and also a heavy dose of sadness. Yeah, and I think that this play runs a gamut of emotions, and some people have said they have the colored Stendhal moments. One lady when she came by me in L.A., I just met her, and she didn't say anything. I said, oh, God, I wonder what happened. And then she emailed me a couple of days later that she was so affected by the play she couldn't say anything. Oh, we got to call her. So what is the, hi, caller. Hi, Governor. Yeah, this is a great play, a great story, very provocative. We have to go see it, and I have two questions. One is how are you going to put scenery there in the Darsdook Theater, it's a small theater? How are you going to get any kind of sets there? And the second question, I'll take my answer offline, is how can I get my tickets? Oh, yeah, well, we'll answer the first ones after. Just see Gary right after the show. He wants to know how you do this. Well, first of all, let's pivot right into, where's the play being shown? The play is being shown at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Darsdook Theater. And you can go and get tickets, if you go to legendofko'olau.com, there's some background on it, and you can click on here, and it'll take you directly to the Darsdook ticket site. So he wants to know, the caller wants to know, how do you get this scenery and all in there? I guess in his mind, I've seen this valley. We actually, he describes it, of course, the character describes it, but we've done some innovative stuff as far as, we have a mobile rear projection unit that's only five feet wide, or less than five feet wide, bounce images off a mirror, and it goes onto a nine foot screen. It's tight. It's tight. Okay, I want to go quickly through the star. Who's the star? You've got a great actor right here. Voronai Kanekuo. I'll tell you, he is remarkable. I mean, Anthony Sepovada, who's the vice president of Warner Brothers Casting, went to the play in Los Angeles. And I thanked him for going, I sent an email thanking him for going, he said, the actor was fantastic, the play was awesome. He was just, he said he hoped that it had a run in LA. You know, one of the things about this play is that more people on the mainland have seen it than in Hawaii. That's right. So we have got to drum up the audience. We got September and November 19th, I mean, I'm sorry, Saturday, November 19th, 7.30 at the Doris Duke Theater, right? That's right. And what we want to do, I mean, you want to take this play and put it Broadway, at least off Broadway. Off Broadway. That's cool. And so you got, you got an initiative started to do that. Yeah, we're, we're starting a committee to discuss how to take it to Broadway. I mean, to, to Manhattan at least. Okay. So the first step is getting people to go through the play, right? That's right. And then we're going to take it to Manhattan. Folks, our time is up. We have just had another wonderful show and go see the legend of Koalao, Saturday, November 19th, 19th, and hopefully you'll join this movement to show it in Broadway.