 I'm Marcia Joyner and we are navigating the journey and today's journey is very very special. We are going to visit with my dear friend, and you know I only talk to dear friends, Gary Kuboto on my way. So with the magic of think tech here we are across the ocean. Gary is a dear friend and I Gary I have known as an activist as well as a writer and a publisher and he was a newspapers and he was out rep community and activist pro projects and then his latest most is his play The Legend of Kohola. So real quick there you are Gary tell us about Gary. Well I was born and raised in Hawaii on Oahu and I came I got my education around the same time as the Vietnam War was rising up and became an activist of sorts and then associated with a group called Kukua Hawaii which was a group that fought a lot of evictions on Oahu and successfully fought these evictions back in the early 1970s. Then I went back to school and to earn a living basically and learn a professional trade of sorts as a journalist and I've worked for several newspapers in Hawaii and Guam and now I'm retired but one of the things that I did in the meantime as I wrote a play that received the national grant from the National Performance Network of New Orleans and that enabled me to produce the play and now it's touring in Hawaii and elsewhere just depending upon whether we can do the financial arrangement and everything in place including the actor. Well it is such a fabulous play tell us about it it's kind of thing I'm not sure that I have the right words to describe it because one man's show however it's the backdrop and the pictures that that move with the show that gives it the depth and and of course the actor is superb. So tell us the story where you're going. The story revolves around uh Hawaiian cowboy uncle Waikāt Kāluwai Kōlau. It's a historically based play so I had to do quite a bit of research more than a year and then it took me about six months to write the play. Of course you could say it took a lifetime to write it because the skills that you know you acquire take a lifetime and I was lucky enough to be able to to get into some of his background. It's about basically love and survival his love for his family and the survival of his family despite attempts by the despite the the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and attempts by the new government to force him and his son to Kalapapa on the island of Molokai where there was a hence his disease colony. He didn't want to go there if he used to go there so he went into Kalalau Valley in North Kaua'i and resisted. Resisted the militia? The government forces yeah the government forces that had the census right after him and he was very successful in doing it actually because of his knowledge of the terrain and he was a good shot and it was one of these he wasn't looking for trouble but he just didn't want to go so in the eyes of that yeah it would have been terribly difficult had he gone because there would not have been a familiar family structure to support him. A lot of the people who lived in Kalalau Valley who were had hence his disease relied upon their kin to drop off food once in a while and you know it had that system of support whereas taking him and his son to a remote island of Peninsula that they called the living grave was not something that he wanted to see happen especially to his son who was only nine years old at the time. So but that would mean leaving his wife and the other children? Exactly and that was another factor that happened because back then you had a situation where for a while they allowed Kokus or family members to go along with the hence and disease patients but then the new government and the board of health changed that policy and it upset quite a few people because a lot of them who were who were had getting the hence his disease were native Hawaiians and very attached to you know of course the area where they lived and the families and so it it was a very difficult time for them. Well this was 18 what the year? 1893 he went into the valley in 1892 excuse me and then in 1893 he there was the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and then a stepped up effort to get the lepers out of Kalalau Valley and he had warned people that if they try and go into the valley he would shoot them and so a deputy sheriff went into the valley and he shot the deputy sheriff and killed them and then all hell broke loose because the new government that had just overthrown the monarchy felt threatened by his actions so they sent essentially a contingent from their militia and deputies I think it was about more than 50 of them and including a canon to try and capture him. A canon into the valley? Yeah a corrupt canon it was the kind that you put actually shells in and fire it um fortunate for him and unfortunate for them they fired it at the wrong time and he had already left the cave that in which they tried to shoot the the shells into and so he wasn't there but one of the things that happened was his they tried after two of the men had been shot by him the soldiers themselves and one accidentally shot himself they went and tried to get his sister first they tried to get his mother but she was too sick and then they forced the sister and her husband at gunpoint to go into the valley and try to flush him out but by the time they did all that he had left that area of the cave and so they weren't able to find him and so they declared him either dead or or something like that in this abandoned efforts basically which you know they probably should have done from the very start because that way no one would have been killed. Well it is like I said it's just a marvelous just the actor what's his name he is fabulous what's his name? He's Mornai Kanekoa and Mornai um is a what's born and raised on Maui and he's now living in Los Angeles as an actor he's a native Hawaiian and he was a University of Hawaii regent scholar they pick about one out of what only 20 a year and it includes tuition books and and living expenses so he's no ordinary person and he also has a masters in drama from the University of Southern California when I when I was looking for him I pretty much cast the net wider because I was unable to find someone who could remember the lines and I got a call from him and we interviewed Mornai by Skype because I had sent letters to various drama departments and in colleges and after we decided to pick him out like I asked him so you know where do you where do you come from where do you live and they said oh my parents come from Kahlua and you know I live in Maui too so I said to him you mean I have to go all the way to California to find somebody who lives about seven miles from me so but sometimes that's where it takes uh it was very yes of course do we have a picture of him Mornai's done about 20 uh 22 performances and it's it's ranged from um him being us being invited to Kalapapa by the State Department of Health and also us touring say Los Angeles Berkeley in Sacramento in Sacramento um there were more it was a sold out crowd and there were more than 600 people in attendance at the Sacramento City College performing from performing arts theater and it was very gratifying to see so many people grateful for his his portrayal of Kahlua and that's uh that's been our goal basically tell the story from um with a native Hawaiian performer from from a point of view of that historical moment and to educate people about an important part of history and that's the around the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy there's a lot of relevance in that question with all the sovereignty did we find a picture yeah did we find a picture at all they'll they'll keep looking that's okay just go ahead but when you're in a California and other locations do they really get the depth of the uh struggle at the time of the overthrow do they understand that I think they they then it's those who are Hawaiian have read a lot of the stories that that um of Peelani his wife and and also there's a W. S. Merwin and folding clefs who wrote an ode about Koolau and then Jack I mean um Jack London who wrote a story as well so they're familiar with um various accounts but in my account is basically from Kahlua speaking himself about what happened and that's that's injecting an entirely different kind of perspective about how someone with his wilderness skills and with his conflicted emotions um had to deal with uh the situation you see he was he and his wife were educated until 817 in a mission school which meant that they um knew how knew how to read and write in English um and also that you know they had this strong tie to the um Christian church and and how to reconcile that at that moment during the overthrow was a very difficult thing to do considering the fact that you had um sons of uh grandsons of missionaries who were an uh a part of uh the overthrow and so we we address these issues in the play and uh I know some people feel that it's a to play is a bit rebellious but sometimes um you know you need to have the truth portrayed um and to speak the truth is an important part of being of course a journalist in my in my field and so I'm willing I'm willing to uh take whatever criticism comes my way as long as it is the truth and it's provable well tell me do you really do you get criticism or because it's such a beautifully done I'm maybe I'm just uh biased but it's such a beautiful beautifully portrayed just the quality of the of the play the whole atmosphere the beautiful way you transpose the pictures behind the screen and behind the stage because it is a one person one man's talking it is just so beautiful I I'm I'm maybe I am being biased but how do you I'm talking about the pushback the comments you were talking about is it just that they don't like don't like the story the yeah I think I think I it's hard for me to identify exactly what what sometimes people feel I think that um it doesn't quite portray the the native Hawaiian in the way that some people some people attached to the visitor industry might want um here's a Hawaiian who's a man a live male um figure and he's he's funny he's loving he's argumentative and he has all these qualities um but he also has a quality of willing willingness to to speak his mind and rebel and I think that um people some people aren't accustomed to that or afraid of that but that's the way things work back then and that's the way things are right now you know with the the sovereignty movement things like that you know we don't have I don't think there's any kind of advocate uh of violence or anything like that I think but speaking one's mind trying to speak the truth is an important part of coming to terms with history and with with oneself as a human being well it is a different uh portrayal than what the tourist industry would have us believe so you're right if if you're looking for that image that the today's tourism gives us this is quite a stretch quite a difference which is the way it should be you know the honesty with which he portrays the honesty with which he he's just I can't say enough great things about him I wish that for those people that don't get to see the play if there was a way to video to um the tape this the play not video but real um whatever we call it photography motion picture quality so that the depth and the whole thing is is just there for for those of us for those people that haven't been able to see the play how many times have you shown the play and how many places um 22 and um it's been on to 22 the 22 performances it's been to Kawai, Maui, Molokai, um and um Oahu and Honolulu yeah yeah Honolulu yeah and it's been to Los Angeles Berkeley and Sacramento um when we started out my expectations were a bit small I I had written the play and uh I just wanted to see um it read and to have a reading and to my surprise when I sent out the script the people who wanted to read the play included Ed Ka Ahia who's a well-known actor uh with Booga Booga uh long time ago and then Kayle Wolford who actually um was in the process of developing his film the Haumea and Kayle had acted as a king and the king and I at the London Palladium so he seeing that they were interested helped me a lot in um moving forward with the whole plan of trying to get it produced and luckily um we did get a grant from the National Performance Network of New Orleans uh I was one of six one of one of a there were six people selected out of more than 60 applicants and I was one of them and so um it was a competitive process and and so that only made me think well you know there must be something to it so I kept on going especially after when we when we went to different libraries and had these readings and there was only a spotlight and we darkened the windows when we lift when we had the lights lifted up and suddenly you could see the people many of them were crying and I've never seen that in a theater before and that told me that we had something very special it's a gift you know I I wrote it but I don't feel that necessarily I'm the one who who who did it you know because it it takes a village of people people I know who are Hawaiian people I know of different ethnicities who have helped me in my way as a writer to to get to that point well I sat and cried so but then I cried commercial so I'm not of course I'm being biased but it I did cry yes and um so what's next where do you go from here we are we have completed filming the play um itself and uh we're editing it and what we plan to do at the very least is to send it to various theaters um to see if they might be interested in having the one man show at their theaters um I don't know if it's going to be good enough for a commercial quality to to be able to sell sell it as a film per se um it's difficult already to to do a one man play and something like this takes a lot of cutting and a lot of imagination in order to bring out the actual acting I think that the the best example of that has been however uh Terence Knapp and Father Damien and that was actually performed at Kennedy Theater many years ago and I saw it when it premiered I was there and I was just blown away by how Terence Knapp created the character and so um I immediately looked for the writer of course because I'm a writer was Eldyte Eldyte Morris and I within the two weeks of that time I spent a lunch with her at her home talking about how she went about writing the play and so um she was very kind to do that and it I had a path at that point I didn't realize it at the time but it it did help me just say that you had a one a path to on how to develop the play yeah oh great yeah and she um so she collaborated with um Terence Knapp on developing the play herself because this was the first one of one of her first plays I want to well the way she said it was basically that at times like he would make suggestions that she would think about and she she would agree and Terence Terence Knapp was just an extraordinary actor I mean he had been with the um with the Royal London Theater and and um he was he actually as Father Damien um in a film getting back to why these kinds of films are extraordinary he actually won a Peabody Award for his acting in great performances on on public television nationwide so it can be done although it's very challenging and uh we've been struggling uh on our own uh he had the support of Hawaii Public TV and Nino Martin who was uh yes then um the the head of the he was the artistic director and Nino and him took about six months of shooting at Kennedy Theater in order to create the rendition that was eventually shown on great performances we've had to I've had to spend my money in order to fly in uh cinematographer from Los Angeles who's a friend in order to shoot and just develop this preliminary uh rendering of the play itself yeah so it's been a hard it's been a bit harder but you know we're still going for it well would you look at or work with a Hawaii Public Television for this because it's so special have you reached out to them at all um yeah we have uh you know we've invited them to the play um but I'm not sure anyone came frankly um I think that um a lot of people think when they see that when they think of plays they think that it's a community theater production of sorts uh and it's nothing like that I mean you know Marsha as a journalist I worked in Mao for the Maui news like that and a lot of people um were were amazed when I won four national awards including awards from the National Press Club National Newspaper Association for the writing that I did and this is basically another example of you know what I'm trying to do and what I'm striving for in terms of quality um and it's it's sometimes a struggle because I think that um people have it set in their mind exactly what they think already um and it takes a bit of a break away from that in order for them to come to terms with um a different kind of writing and and I'm not from within the um the group of people who are associated with various theaters I I come from it from a journalist background and from a writer's background and um that makes it perhaps sometimes difficult but I also realize if it hadn't been for that background I wouldn't have been able to write the plays the way I have now speaking of background before we run out of time let's get back to your activism especially at Paloma Valley real quick yeah okay then that's a great period of time 90 early 1970s there's maybe four or five agents who work for newspapers if you were to go to the university of Hawaii and look at the concourse out of 300 people if you saw five people who are native Hawaiian or Filipino you know that was pretty good things have changed an awful lot since that time and and the whole notion of Paloma Valley has changed since we were successful in resisting evictions and helping to preserve um these communities intact Filipino communities like Otakamp, Waiole, Waikane, Heiea, Kea we even did a sit-in at the University of Hawaii to preserve ethnic studies back in 1972 and the whole point of that was to be able to tell the stories our history our way and that's what I've attempted to do in this whole process of becoming a journalist and becoming a playwright and well let me just add a footnote here you mentioned 1974 at that time at the University of Hawaii the Hawaiian language was in the foreign language department and there was one class in Hawaii Anna that's it so yeah exactly anyway I'll tell you what yeah now Hawaii the you know the Hawaiian is the first language side by side with English and there are charter schools uh that teach Hawaiian and a very dear friend of mine Larry Kamakaviva Ole received a resolution honoring him he was the leader of our group Kokua Hawaii honoring him for being a part of the start of the Hawaiian Renaissance so it's come full circle where we were like vilified or criticized for what we did to the point where people begin to understand that what we did was to push the envelope outward and create a broader conversation so that people could begin to understand their own history and begin to stand up and begin to discuss it well we are just about out of time and this has been a great pleasure as always and I am looking forward to your filming and moving it on so everybody gets to see this it is most important it is vital especially with this new movement of the young Hawaiians they really need to see this story so Gary darling thank you thank you thank you so much for spending this time with me and send my love to Melinda I will and aloha and we will see you next time