 Hi, welcome to Think Tech. We are raising public awareness about technology, energy, diversity and globalism. This show is center stage. I am your host, Donna Blanchard, proud managing director of Kumo Kahua Theatre. And we are coming to you live from Pioneer Plaza in the heart of downtown Honolulu, very near Kumo Kahua Theatre. I am very excited to introduce our guest to you today. His name is Ryan Okinaka Oki, as we lovingly call him in the theater community. He is a playwright. His brand spanking new playwright and his play, Ai Hula, is going to be presented at Kumo Kahua Theatre. Welcome, Oki. Thank you very much. Should I call you Ryan, since this is an official engagement? I feel like the universe is leading me toward just being Ryan so you can call me Ryan. Okay, alright. I feel more comfortable with you. She just embraced it already. Okay, Ryan. Is this the first script you have written? This is my first full length script, yes. I wrote a couple like ten minute shows in college but it's about it, yeah. Oh, okay. So you studied playwriting in school? I did not. I did not, no. You just wrote them on your own time. Yeah, I just wrote them on my own time, yeah, exactly. And I took a creative writing class, but even at the time when I was writing at LTC when I was doing theater, I had no clue what I was doing. I was just like, oh, I'm going to write a script today. What makes a person say, I'm going to write a script? I don't know. I was doing improv at the time. I was really getting into improv. And I guess at one point I was like, oh, when we do improv scenes, I'm pretty much creating dialogue on the spot. And I think that's the hardest part in playwriting is creating dialogue. Because everyone can come up with plots and stories and whatnot. But I think I feel like the hardest part is creating characters and figuring out what that character would say. But we do that in improv all the time. So to me it just kind of came naturally. I just started writing scenes. Okay, I'm going to write. Have you written or done other creative writing? I went to a creative writing class where I wrote a couple of stories that I really liked. Recently back in last year in the fall, I wrote somewhat of a musical thing for the Gay Men's Chorus of Honolulu. I wrote scene interviews that kind of tied together all the songs. So yeah, stuff like that. Okay. Are you a member of the Gay Men's Chorus? I took a break. The moment that my play got picked up to be produced, I told myself I was going to focus this year on to making sure that this play would be absolutely perfect by the time it opened. So I kind of took a back seat on the chorus for a little bit. That's probably a wise idea. Honolulu does have a really wonderful Gay Men's Chorus. They do, yes. And there are concerts coming up too in December 11. So they're holiday concerts. Shout out to the Honolulu Gay Men's Chorus. Okay, so then you decided I want to write this full-length play. How did that come about? Well, that's an interesting story. My brother is a kumu hula and he has a halal. He asked me one day. He knew that my passion was theater. And he asked me one day that he was doing his hula huike. And he just asked me to create a play that would interlude his hula numbers. So, you know, basically most huikis are, you know, the girls will go up and they'll do a hula number, and then an emcee will come out and be like, okay, so the next number we're going to perform is entitled blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is what it's about. Here's the composer. You know, so he wanted to do something a little different. So he asked me to create a story. And he gave me a set list of songs that he was going to do, and that's it. And he told me just create something. So I did. So I took all the songs that he had. I created this story about this girl who, for whatever reason, let go of her Hawaiian cultural roots and moved to the mainland. And her grandmother passes away and she comes back for the funeral. And one of the things that the grandmother used to do was take her kids to different locations in Oahu and tell them stories about that place. She was storytelling. And the point of the huike was he was doing different songs about different areas of Oahu. Oh, nice idea. So when she came back for the funeral, then the cousins decided to do this tribute to their grandmother by doing exactly what she did and going to the different locations that she would take them and telling the stories, and the girls would come out and do the hula about Ewa Beach or Hale Eva or Waikiki. And you know, I kind of wrote that story as kind of a tribute to my father who had passed away that same year. So it was really beautiful. I mean, we pulled out all the shots for the show. And we had it set to be performed in Waikiki. And we had brought in staging, lights, audio. I think we had 300 people who bought tickets to come see the show. I called in all of my theater connections and I brought in my friends to be the actors. And we rehearsed everything and it was a beautiful show. We started the show and literally like 30 minutes in, they called it a tsunami evacuation on Waikiki. Oh, no. We had to just stop right there. And it was like heartbreaking, so that story. You never got to redo it. We never got to redo it. So I mean, at that point I was just like, oh well, I guess that story was just never meant to be told. And then two years later I sat in the Starbucks and I pulled out my iPad and I typed in the title Ai Hula and this is what became of it. Wow. That's really cool. I'm glad that we had the show happening at Kumakuhua. But I want to go back for just a moment because why wouldn't you do the Hoike? Why wouldn't you work on resurrecting that? I think I looked at what that was and I really liked the idea of that story. And I think it worked for the Hoike. It worked for the way that my brother had set up his show. But it wasn't exactly the story that I wanted to tell. You know, the heart of that story I suppose was this character named Ponu who for whatever reason felt like her connection to her culture was disconnected or disjointed for whatever reason. So I wanted to explore that idea of why it was. So then I had that central story. And then I kind of had this idea that I really wanted to write love letters to all of my friends. All of my female friends. So I would pick different people like Jamie Bradner, for instance, who is Kumu's residential white girl actor. Young. Young. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Young white girl actor. But I would look at Jamie and I would pull out all the things that I love about her. And I would pick the one thing that I felt maybe she struggled with. And the one thing I took was acceptance, being that she's a white girl and she performs at a very local theater. I think one of the struggles that she has as an actor who likes to perform at Kumu Kuu Theater is not being able to get the parts because she's not the right type. Which is interesting because if I were to go to New York, I'd have the exact same. Just about any other theater, you don't have the proud. That's one of the things that I love about Kumu Kuu, even though I've been here five years, there's been one role for me. It was a good role, though. It was a good role. It was a good play. Yeah, you worked that role. Here you come back. So that's really interesting. They are very beautiful roles that you've written for the women. Do you feel like you have a relationship with each of those characters? I do, I think. And I hope anyone who comes to see it will feel the same way. I deal with body issues, I deal with acceptance, I deal with the idea of coming of age and understanding that this world that we live in moves so quickly, and if we blink and we don't pay attention to it, then we're going to die one day and we're going to regret every decision that we've ever made. All of those things is things that we always go through. And as far as the character themselves, I put my voice into each one of these girls. So every time I hear them talk, I'm like, oh, yeah, there I am. Nice. Yeah, I feel like in the advertising, we have a lot of information about, we've used this idea that it's an iPhone world, but the halau is tradition, and where does that fit into it. But I really feel like the underlying message of all of it is being yourself and loving, you love your family because they are themselves, sometimes in spite of it, because it too. I think it's a really beautiful message to it, and it's kind of surprising that it's coming out of someone in his first full-length play. Did you have help with the script? I did. I wrote it, and I had it finished in first draft, and I looked at it, and I was fortunate enough to work with a lot of great writers who love and support me, I suppose, because I literally just e-mailed a bunch of my friends, Lee Kataluna, Mona Z Smith, who's in New York, and I just messaged them, like, will you read my play and tell me what you think? And I was just kind of expecting them to just say, oh, yeah, it's good, keep going. But I sent it to them, and they both sent back pages of different advice and criticism and great words of encouragement and things that I can work on, things that I would never have thought. So it just really helped me to develop myself and to really think about how I create characters, how I tie in the storylines and stuff like that. So I had a lot of support. Even beyond just the writing, once my play got a word that it was being produced, just people from all over my life just started to call me and see what they could do to support me. And I look at it now, it's like I did one show at Mono Valley Theater called Once Upon One Other Time, and literally, my whole crew and half my cast is from that one show, because we were so tight and we were such a family, but they all just came in, they just surrounded me with their support and love, and now they're just doing whatever they can to support this endeavor. So it's just really like heartwarming and it's nice. Oh, that's amazing. That is a wonderful family story. Yeah, I know it's so. And I'm amazed when I hear about, so many playwrights have the same story that when they were starting, they would send their script to a very well-established cumul of theirs, and the support just rushes in. And I think there's the fear that someone's going to look at it and be like, oh, I don't want to have to waste my time with this. But no, they, probably because they experienced the same thing when they were coming up, they're giving back, and they must believe in you if they would want to do that too. Yeah, so we're going to go to our first break here. The show is Ai Hula that we're talking about. The playwright is Ryan Okinaka, and you're watching Center Stage. We'll be right back. For a very healthy summer, watch Viva Hawaii. We are here live on Mondays at 3 p.m., and we bring guests like our best health coach, Elena Maganto. Eat well and follow her tips. Viva la comida saludable. Aloha. It's summertime in Honolulu, Hawaii. My name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm your host for Shrink Rap Hawaii. We're on every Tuesday at 3 o'clock, and we talk about mental health and general health. Join us. Thank you. Aloha. I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii Is My Mainland, here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday afternoon at 3 p.m. Start your Paul Hanna weekend off with the show where I talk to people about issues pertinent to Hawaii. You can see my previous shows at my blog, kauilukas.com, and also on Think Tech's show. Sorry. Hi, we're back where you're live. This is center stage on the Think Tech Hawaii digital network. If you would ever like to join us in our downtown studio audience here in Pioneer Plaza, you may do so. Just email Jay, that's J-A-Y, at thinktechawaii.com, and he will hook you up. If you or someone you know really should be on this show talking about the process behind your art, if you would love to know about that, you can find me on Facebook, dana.landchert, or you can tweet me at, it's all about Donna, of course it is. We're talking with Ryan Okinaka, whose show runs basically through the month of November at Kumakuhua Theater, a little bit into December. We're almost sold out for your opening weekend already. Exciting, yeah. You have a lot of support rolling in. And it's a beautiful subject matter. So it's really nice to see that. I always feel like theater is for our audiences, but we have to admit that it is also for us to what we do on stage or backstage or pre-stage. It feeds us as well. So let's talk about the process of actually mounting this show. Let's go back even earlier. You submitted the script to our artistic director, Harry Wong. Were there any changes? Did he request any changes in the script initially? Not at the time when he said that they were going to do it. He was directing, so I'm sure he already had ideas of what he wanted to do with the script. Once it got picked up, I definitely knew that the second act needed a lot more development. I spent like two years writing the first acts only. I was very happy with the first act. I felt like I set up where the girls needed to go, and then I kind of left it at the point where, okay, now they need to start transforming. And then I spent the first three months of this year just knocking out the second act. So by the time I had finished the whole thing, I pretty much knew that I had completed A, B, and C, but I was just still worried about B and C, you know? So yeah, so that was the... And I think Harry also agreed. That's the only comment he gave me that was that the second act needed a little bit more work. So once it got picked up, I put a little bit more work into the second act, and I think now we have a pretty good, well-concise show. It's to Harry, yeah. Well, and very often on... Well, you had some read-throughs. That's just a part of the process to hear it. Red is different to hear actors. How actors react to the words that you've got. One of my first worries was that here I am, you know, a young man trying to write for very different women, you know? And that was one of my questions to Lee. Lee Kataluna was like, oh, I don't know if I know how to write women. I mean, I don't even know if I know how to write men, you know, but... So I think that was my first worry was that putting it out there while the girls, when they read it, feel like, oh, yeah, this sounds like a woman or this sounds like something I would say. Or even the struggles that they go through with the body issues or the acceptance, whether that would be translatable if I did it sensitively enough so that they would feel that it was done authentically. It was a couple of some of my worries. But once they started reading it and then once I heard what they had to say, I'm like, oh, okay, like I did okay. Yeah, because you wrote it with love for those characters. I think that shows. So you have a lot of times some of our playwrights are not even present when the play is being mounted for the first time or they will come and be able to be a part of a few of the rehearsals. But you've been a part of this process since the auditions, yes. How has that been for you? That's been great. I tell a lot of people that I'm very slowly trying to be the local Tyler Perry because I want to do it all. I want to write my shows, direct it, and star in it. Yeah, you do. You can do that. It's great. I feel like I told myself that I would approach this whole process with a lot of fluidity and openness. So from day one, I told Harry, you do what you want to do and if I say no, I say no. There was a very clear mutual understanding between him and also my brother, who's the hula choreographer, between the three of us, knowing that we all were in agreement that the story was straightforward and that we didn't want to affect the story, but how we told that story had a lot of room for changes. I was just enjoying sitting back and seeing those things evolve and change. I think as an actor and as a director and now as a playwright, I understand it from all three sides of the page. As an actor, I want to be free to explore the character however I want to play it and not let a playwright come in and be like, no, you have to say it this way. So I wouldn't want that. And it was weird because I guess because I was there every day, the girls would come up to me and they would always ask, why are you saying this? And I would never answer. I'd be like, oh, how you're saying it sounds like how you should be saying it. Because one of the things I told the girls early on when they first got cast is I created these characters to be very real girls who go through very real issues and I'm asking you for a lot to be able to dig deep into their own selves and to expose themselves in the way that I'm asking them to do it. They were me if I was an actor. I would love to just dig right into a really meaty character and rip my ribs out and expose my heart to the stage. We often don't find ourselves in cast in a lot of roles like that. So when I was creating, I wanted to make sure that I was giving these girls these opportunities to be able to do that. So yeah, it was a very great experience. I think there was very little that I had issues with as far as changes. Things that were being made just completely evolved and enhanced the show in ways that I wouldn't even have even dreamed of. So it's just been great. I think that when you're working with a new script and Harry is very careful to make sure that directors are paired with playwrights appropriately so that they are able to deal with those scripts as they need to be. Because sometimes changes do need to be made. And it's very different than if you're doing a Sam Shepard piece, you're not going to question those words. You are going to figure out how to make those words work. And sometimes when we do world premieres of shows like this, that that onus is not on the actor. It is more on the director to work sort of liais between the actor and the playwright to figure out does the script need to change? Does the actor need to work harder? Does the playwright need to go back to work on it a little bit more? It's a very different process. I find a lot of comfort in one time I was doing a Beth Henley play, Graceland. And our director had to call her only because she references a song that's on the other side of one of Elvis's songs. It's on the other side and we need to know it because we wanted to play it. So we called Beth Henley not to change anything but just to ask but even the work of figuring out why an actor is saying what they're saying that's part of the joy of being an actor. That's part of the work so I'm glad that you let them have that discovery on their own because they might have also felt as though they needed to involve you in the process and it's good that it sounds like you had a really great relationship with them and you're happy with the results. We have a preview this evening are you nervous? Excited? I don't know. Every night it's in that magic moment this magic era of theater where everything just slowly magically starts to come together because we ran it through it on Sunday and Sunday was a 12-hour day we did tag and costumes and incorporated set pieces and props it was just a really long day and by the end of it we had done a full run and I went home and was like what are we doing? What did we get ourselves into? Then we all came back on Monday night and everyone just jumps miles ahead and again last night every night that goes by I'm more like flabbergasted about how this is all becoming like beautifully perfect so I think every night that goes by I start to get a little less nervous and a little bit more excited because the girls are starting to take the stories and starting to take the characters all on their own and you start to see the cast start to slowly take the show for themselves which is like a great moment to see them own it and it just becomes their story and they just need an audience so that's what I'm excited for is just to give them an audience to perform it in front of so we'll run the show for a minimum of 5 weeks are you going to watch it? do you want to be there? because it will evolve, it will continue to evolve well such as Kumu we all wear multiple hats I think I stepped on a stage manager you're stage manager I didn't even know you're stage managing your own show you really are doing it all Jamie had commented on one of my facebook posts today and she's like oh you're such a great playwright ad prod master stage manager and I'm like oh my god is that really what I'm doing oh so you're staying you're staying in it when I began directing I had to remove myself and see the first weekend of the show and maybe come back later in the run but other than that I had to remove myself and allow the stage manager normally at that point takes over the show and allow them to stage manager's job is to just make sure that it stays within the general confines of opening night so now it's your responsibility to make sure they stay in line with all of that and who better playwrights to take those two roles but who better to have it to make sure that the integrity remains of the show not that that would ever be an issue with that cast in particular what's next for you after you finish stage managing your own show I don't know I have a couple ideas I told myself that I was going to wait until after opening night to see if I even have a future as a writer because I'm like oh I could open the show and people could be like what does this guy think he's doing I doubt that happens but you know I still want to just keep going the way that I've been you know I never want to pigeonhole myself into one facet of art you know that's just been my ammo since the beginning I've always been I've always acted and I've always tried to direct when I wanted to direct and I've always tried to write when I felt like I needed to write so I just could continually doing that you know I'll probably do the show next year and when I have free time I'll start writing again but yeah who knows you could be our next tour manager or come help me write grant proposals because you haven't done either of those yet I haven't yet such as kumu it's just a matter of time right so the script that you wrote here's something that I always find interesting about playwrights because I don't have that like genetically I don't have that within me I've never felt like I need to write a book I understand how the organic process behind the evolution of this one but do you feel like there's another story that's tugging at you that needs to be told yeah you know of course I mean I have a couple of ideas you know it's funny a lot of my urges to write stems from either my urge to direct something that I I guess it comes from my urge to want to either perform something or see it being done directorily for this show I always want to do heart wrenching emotional scenes where I just get to rail on someone because it's just a therapeutic for actors to be able to do that so like a lot of the scenes in this show came from that urge to just be like okay what can I do so that the actors can just let go of all their inhibitions and just start yelling at each other you know so I guess that's kind of how it stems you know one day I'll wake up and be like oh you know I feel like maybe I should talk about cancer or something you know and I'll use that idea and I'll kind of dive deep into my own life and you know think about it and a story will just kind of evolve from there awesome thank you very much for writing the show I look forward to where you go next and yeah let it come out of your now and I just want to say that the world needs more playwrights we do not have too many playwrights we do not have too many plays keep going everyone needs to keep doing it your stories are important if you write them with honesty they're going to resonate with other people and we want to see in particularly Kumakuhua Theater thank you very much for being on the show few people here I'd like to thank our floor manager Nick Sexton who's right over there thanks our studio overlord who is in my ear and Jay Fidel who somehow manages to put all of this together if you'd like information on the shows at Kumakuhua Theater please visit Kumakuhua.org we'll see you next week bye