In about five weeks we will be producing a show about the Hawaiian snow goddess, Poli‘ahu. Yes, Hawaii has snow every winter on Haleakala and Mauna Kea. It is upon Mauna Kea that Poli‘ahu and her sisters are said to reside. There are actually a lot of very interesting tales about the goddess and her sister, including a sled race against a disguised Pele, the volcano goddess.
We are working with the same company who created a Hawaiian opera based on the myth of the Naupaka flower back in 2006. One of the things that excited me about doing the 2006 show was that the artistic director was taking an approach to storytelling that was ambitious of itself, but fairly new in relation to Hawaiian culture. I thought the show might provide a good model and inspiration for other groups since Hawaii is undergoing something of a cultural renaissance. Since then we have presented a show produced by a partner organization about Kahekili who essentially played Uther to Kamehameha’s Arthur in the unification of the islands.
I had been pleased to learn that the artistic staff creating Kahekili had looked at the Naupaka performance when they were planning to remount their work created a decade earlier. In our early discussions about the Poli‘ahu, the artistic director talked about the lessons and ideas he took from the staging of Kahekili. The idea that there was an artistic conversation of sorts driving the evolution and development of works happening before my eyes really excites me.
This may not seem like big deal in most places where everyone seems to give homage/steal the best of what they see other people doing. There are strict lines of tradition and orthodoxy in hula so even if you explicitly say you aren’t doing hula, but only hula inspired work, your product must still be respectful. Likewise, anything dealing with royalty or divine entities must exhibit suitable reverence. The production of Poli‘ahu is also integrating Siberian and Yupik Eskimo chant and dance so even more attention must be paid to avoid offending someone.
Of course, we also face the challenge of trying to convince people who are familiar with the traditional performance to take a chance on the unorthodox. We have sold out these performances before so we are leaving the door open to add additional shows. But four years ago, the people who seemed to understand what we were trying to do were those least steeped in the traditional arts. In fact, one of the arts reporters who is familiar with the company’s work asked how this production would be any different from their previous work. I almost blessed the opportunity to speak to someone who was a little jaded about it all because I didn’t have to work overcome the inertia of unfamiliarity before even explaining the concept.
I can tell by the way the ticket sales are going that this show is going to be sold by word of mouth and trusted sources rather than print and broadcast media. There are shows six months down the road that are selling about as well on the strength of the brochure alone. They will probably be 1/3 sold before I even revisit my plan to promote them.
Fortunately, we have been working together this summer to line up the interest and involvement of many of these trusted entities and that effort should bear fruit very soon. Once some of that becomes public and visible, we will start reaching out to individuals in the hopes of getting the phrases “I saw…, I heard…” entering conversations, tweets and Facebook postings.
