By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Ask Donald Martin what he loves about theater and he'll tell you stories. Most of his stories are about how other people, people he introduced to theater, connected with something they saw on stage.

Martin first fell in love with theater when he was a young serviceman stationed in San Diego. The famed La Jolla Playhouse was nearby, and servicemen could see big-name stars on stage for a special discounted price.

"I saw Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones and Jose Ferrer and people like that who were making big movies. After that, anytime I was stationed anywhere there was theater, I would go."

The Oregon native eventually came to Hawai'i with the Navy and ended up staying. He got his master's degree in education from UH-Manoa and worked in private and public schools around O'ahu.

In the classroom, theater became part of his lessons.

"If you're teaching social studies, it's nothing more than telling stories. When you're teaching fifth-, sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders, you gotta' just tell them stories because the textbook just sits there. It doesn't mean much."

In the early 1990s, Martin worked at the Weinberg Homeless Village in Wai'anae teaching adults, mostly single moms, to read.

"Their only contact with anything was TV. They seldom went to movies because they didn't have any money," he says.

Martin decided that his students must experience live theater, so he called all the theater companies on the island and asked for free tickets to see the previews or final dress rehearsals of their plays. Martin took his students to see shows at Army Community Theatre, Manoa Valley Theatre, Kumu Kahua Theatre and Diamond Head Theatre.

"I remember we went and saw 'Stop the World, I Want to Get Off," he says. A scene where a downtrodden character finally stands up to a bully really hit home for one of Martin's students.

"When I first met this woman, she literally could not read other than the ABCs and didn't know how to count or add. She'd have her children shop for groceries and of course, consequently, their diet was what a child would want.

"So in the play, the character finally tells the bully off and this woman stands up and goes, 'You tell him, (expletive deleted)! Don't let anybody ever hit you again! I've been hit on the head so many times. No (same expletive) is ever gonna' hit ME again!'"

Martin says the theater got deadly silent, then all of a sudden, there was a great roar and a tremendous cheer.

"She stood up and she bowed. Later the director came and saw me and said, 'Bring her every night!' "

Martin stopped teaching at the Weinberg village after he was diagnosed with cancer. He has had four different kinds of cancers in the past 10 years.

During a period of wellness a few years ago, he called all the theaters again and asked if he could reinstate the program of free preview tickets.

"But I said, this time, I'll bring the three S's: Seniors, sisters (actually nuns from Saint Francis) and students who don't have any money."

Most of "his crew" are older women, widows on fixed incomes who have never been to the theater before.

"They just love it," says Noelani Kamekona, Martin's longtime friend who helps to organize the visits to the theaters. "It opens a whole new world to them."

These days, Martin is too sick to go to the theater. "I can't drive,

I can't eat. I'm learning to walk again. But I'm alive so I can't complain," he says. He gives away his own season tickets and his crew goes to the preview shows without him, but they bring back stories of what happened.

"A very charming thing happened at the preview for 'Ragtime,' " he says. Martin relates the story of a developmentally disabled young man who got to see the show because of the free tickets. "He clapped his hands for the whole performance, he stomped his feet with the music, and when he got excited, he would stand up, throw his arms up in the air and go 'Thank you, thank you thank you,' which is, I think, a charming thing, this man-child who was so enchanted by the rhythms."

So what does Martin love about the theater? He finally decides it can be summed up like this: "I guess I'm like my fifth- and sixth-grade students. I just like a good story."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.