Theater company eager for debut

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

Nan Asuncion and Will Ha'o rehearse for a Lo'i Theatre production in the garage of playwright Karen Yamamoto Hackler's home. The theater company will present "The Lines Are Drawn" at a number of sites. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser 'The Lines Are Drawn' Manoa Valley Church: 7 p.m. Aug. 4 First Presbyterian Church, Hale Ohana Social Hall: 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., Aug. 6 Central Union Church, Parish Hall: 10 a.m. Aug.17, 4 and 7 p.m. Aug. 21 Hawaii Okinawa Center: 7 p.m. Aug. 22 Church of the Crossroads: 10 a.m., 7:30 p.m. Aug. 27 Ho'ala School (311 Lehua St., off Kilani Avenue, Wahiawa): 6 p.m. Aug. 29; picknicking will begin at 5 p.m. on the lawn. General-admission tickets available only at the door, from 45 minutes before showtime. Information on booking a venue: 988-2215

Some of it, she said, comes from the company she's gathered for Lo'i Theatre's first production, "The Lines Are Drawn," premiering Aug. 4. Some of it comes from the words, which give form to those evocative stories of culture and family life and which give Lo'i the hallmark of a homegrown Island troupe.

"The Lines Are Drawn" is the first of two one-acts written by Yamamoto Hackler to be staged in the first season. It depicts an irascible yet loving married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Y.

The husband has painted lines in the garage to help his wife park as well as she does at Safeway. There's an invisible his-and-hers line across the kitchen table to keep their stuff separated. And — this being the biggest thorn in Mrs. Y's side — he likes to sleep with a board down the center of their bed.

The Y's live in a house not unlike the playwright's, where William Ha'o and Nan Asuncion had just finished a run-through in the garage.

Director Jim Nakamoto thumbed through his notes and addressed Asuncion, whose brief line will embody the character of the marriage.

"When you hug him and say, 'Oh, da sweet lolo,' it takes too long," he said.

The actors spring into place and work out a corrective course of action. Nakamoto happily stays seated.

"It's fun, you know," he said. "I don't have to get up and act and go crazy and lose my temper," he said with a laugh.

The actors, who've known Nakamoto since they were his drama students at McKinley High School 30-plus years ago, laugh, too. They remember their teacher jumping up on stage to walk them through parts and, yes, losing his temper now and then.

Yamamoto Hackler also laughs, even though she wrote the scene, even though she's seen them do it in staged readings over the course of a year, while the seed for Lo'i Theatre was still germinating.

It was in those intervening months that she first recognized that magic was at work.

Perhaps it was the way that a serendipitous convergence of events brought in a sponsorship enabling a mini-tour of readings in March 2003 on the Big Island, with stops in Holualoa, Kohala and Wailea. Passing the poi bowl after one reading for a Kohala senior center brought in precisely $88, a lucky number.

OK, so Yamamoto Hackler has the type of positive spirit that lets her see magic in many things. But neither she nor her cast could shake off the feelings they experienced after Nani Svensen, who runs a Kohala guest house, invited them to perform outdoors at a remote lo'i, or taro paddy, she's restored near the town of Kapa'au.

The sight of the bobbing leaves of taro, the way that the sun dipped below the horizon at the instant the reading ended ... it was hard to deny a special kind of blessing on the whole project.

"It all just went gray," she recalled. "It was like somebody hit this huge switch. The whole event was absolutely chicken skin.

"Afterwards, we enjoyed the stars and asked each other, 'Did you feel the spirits?' Nan said, 'There were more people there than the human shells we could see.' "

It was at that point that Yamamoto Hackler decided on the name "Lo'i Theatre" for her company. The lo'i is emblematic of her own home in Manoa, where the first two plays are set. (The spring production will be "At the Grave," based at the Manoa Chinese Cemetery.)

"And I felt that in the way that a lo'i would nurture and nourish a community, that's what I would want my theater to do," she said.

Yamamoto Hackler said that, although Lo'i Theater would do some shows at fixed venues, one of its missions is to bring productions to smaller or otherwise unconventional spaces at locations scattered around the state.

That impressed some of the underwriters of the company's inaugural season: the nonprofits W.I.N. Foundation, Malama O Manoa and the Hawai'i People's Fund.

It also converted guests attending its coming-out party in February at First Presbyterian Church. One was Sarah Preble, a retired art librarian, who turned up with her husband, artist and educator Duane Preble. She admitted that they first had to overcome their initial reaction to the invite: "What? ANOTHER theater group?"

"And I felt that in the way that a lo'i would nurture and nourish a community, that's what I would want my theater to do." Karen Yamamoto Hackler • Playwright, Lo'i Theatre

For the playwright herself, there's a fringe benefit: watching bits of personal history re-enacted on stage.

In "The Lines Are Drawn," the central characters reminisce about recycling and about tree frogs their children kept. Those were favorite moments from Yamamoto Hackler's own life with her now-teenage sons.

Real-life snippets such as this help sustain storytelling, theater and culture, she said.

"Folk tales, your personal stories, are your legacy to your family," she said. "The whole thing about recycling ... that's from my family, too."

She paused.

"We don't have a board down the middle of our bed, though," she added. "That was pure imagination."

Reach Vicki Viotti at vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8053.