Stage Review
'Wild Wisdom' found liberating

Jeannette Paulson Hereniko has made a personal journey and has turned it into a dramatic piece of storytelling so that we can join her on the trip. She premiered the performance at Kumu Kahua last year and is reprising it at Hawai‘i Pacific University for one more weekend.

‘Wild Wisdom’ 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 4 p.m. Sunday, Hawai‘i Pacific University, 45-045 Kamehameha Highway (off Pali Highway) $10 general admission 531-9796

"Wild Wisdom" is the title, but it also represents the deep inner voice that validated her self-worth when other voices spoke only of conformity and repression. It’s a highly personal story, told with warmth and candor. As an invitation to begin our own personal search, Hereniko’s story is also universally liberating.

Known in Hawai‘i mainly for her 15 years as director of the Hawaii International Film Festival, Hereniko begins her tale with her childhood in Portland, Ore., discounted by her mother in favor of a prettier younger sister.

"Why can’t you be like Sheila? Why can’t you be normal?" are the dominant themes. Young Jeannette instinctively rebels against them by telling stories and gaining recognition outside her family. But fate wields a strong hand and she escapes by marrying too young — gaining a husband who continues to edit, limit and disapprove.

Divorce follows, but not until there are three children and a string of abortive careers. Then, on the threshold of middle age, Hereniko must confront the possibility of a genetic predisposition to early Alzheimer’s disease and a budding interracial romance with a younger man.

The two-act, first-person narrative creates several strong images: an ugly duckling youngster hiding under her bed sheets, a high school girl trying out a cashmere sweater and a Doris Day smile, a young wife and mother mobilizing other repressed young women to create a statewide event for children.

But the strongest images are of her mother and sister in advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease with vacant eyes and expressionless faces, and the torment of her mother’s funeral in the relentless Oregon rain, forcing Jeannette to go inward once again to visit the deep, dark corners of her being.

The evening finds balance in lighter moments. Her young suitor’s frank and serious offer of romance is incongruous counterpoint to an older woman who is half-convinced she is losing her mind. And the child’s irrepressible spirit is never far below the surface whenever dour authority figures attempt to flatten it.

The two-hour performance plays like a cozy conversation with an old friend. But it is not a history. Rather, "Wild Wisdom" is a retelling of the darkness before there was light and only a prelude of something rich and wonderful that is yet to come.

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