If there's one thing local playwright Yokanaan Kearns knows for sure, it's that inspiration comes when you least expect it. The last time it struck, he was sitting in Zippy's on Vineyard Boulevard talking about the movie "Alien vs. Predator."

Bad sci-fi horror flick. Humorous children's play. The correlation? None. Except for the title.

Kearns' "Maui vs. Hercules," a tale of god-on-god warfare being produced by Honolulu Theatre for Youth, opens tonight at Tenney Theatre, and if his past plays are any indication, this one's going to be a real crowd-bringer.

As Kearns' work tends to be, this latest is a coming together of everything he knows. Pidgin? Check. History? Check. Mythology? Check. Identity issues? Big check. The part-time playwright and full-time classics scholar blends ancient with modern to create meaningful tales that educate, too.

Kearns sat down for a chat in his office at Hawai'i Pacific University, where he is associate vice president for academic programs.

Q. Were you writing other forms of literature before you started writing plays?

A. My first published work was in "Bamboo Ridge." It was a short story called "Confessions of a Stupid Haole."

Q. Were you born and raised in Hawai'i?

A. Since I was 5. I was a fat haole kid in public school — I learned pidgin and comedy fast. That keeps you alive on kill-haole day.

Q. Your plays are very local ... and then they're not. Is that dichotomy also a part of your identity?

A. It represents the confusion of my identity. Because on the one hand, part of me is just this local kid who went to public school. And then there's the other side of me that somehow became enamored of the ancient world, and I went down that really strange, esoteric, very un-Hawai'i path. But I realized after a while that I'm equally comfortable in both worlds, and it was when I started writing plays that the two sides of me came together.

Q. All of your plays so far have been centered on cultural diversity issues. Have you found your your niche? Culture-clash theater?

A. Yeah. It's become my niche.

Because of who I am and how I grew up, I'm really fascinated by personal identity and figuring out who you are. Maui and Hercules have different identities and come from different backgrounds, but they come together because they both want the same thing.

Q. If you had to break it down, what percentage of your playwriting is for you, and what percentage is for us, the audience?

A. I think it's all equal. I get something out of it, and there's also a message. But it's not a hit-you-over-the-head message. With "Maui vs. Hercules," the message skirts the controversial because it says we have to share the 'aina. Not everyone agrees with that.

For me, I'm Maui and Hercules and I have to share this body. In writing the play, I'm working out how these two sides of me share the same body. That's what I get out of it. And then I consider how I can make people laugh and think at the same time. Humor is the best teaching tool.

Q. Did you set out to write for a young audience?

A. All my plays happen to turn out that way. I write for adults, and if it's the right subject matter, it'll work for kids, too. I don't dumb them down for a younger audience.

Q. The result is that everyone is entertained.

A. When my first play "Pidg Latin" was at Kumu Kahua Theatre, it played for an adult audience and they were falling all over themselves laughing. The coolest moment I've ever had was watching this big Hawaiian guy laughing so hard, I thought he was going to cry and fall over. And I thought: Here I am, this haole guy and I wrote this thing that's making him laugh. I'm having this effect on him and I'm touching him in a way that is tearing him up. It was such a great feeling.

Q. Using that as the high point, where does "Lost" actor Michael Emmerson reading (for the annual HTY benefit last year) the part of pidgin-speaking Maui fit in?

A. There were moments when I was horrified — when he slipped into a Jamaican-like accent. But there were moments when he really got it.

Q. The majority of your plays are written using both English and pidgin. Do you consider yourself a member of the pidgin-advocate community?

A. I think so, but if within that group there's a subgroup of people who says we ought to be bilingual, then I'm in that camp.

I like the idea that pidgin and English both have their standard places and that it doesn't have to be an either-or proposition.

HTY still gets complaints about plays that are in pidgin. But my work is a mixture of standard English and pidgin. Hercules, at the beginning of this play, speaks in poetry. And Maui has a monologue in pidgin.

Q. But isn't that the beauty of this place? Isn't that why we like it here so much?

A.Yeah. It really is. The cultural diversity, the ethnic diversity, the linguistic diversity.

Q. What's next for you?

A. I actually just finished writing a screenplay that has nothing to do with Hawai'i. ... There's no pidgin in it. It's the other side of my world. I'm trying my hand at the haole world.