While a theatrical performance is meant to convey the playwright’s words to the audience, the process leading up to a show can mean many different things for the cast and crew. Those of us who are living and breathing The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu, particularly now as we near the first performance, have made different connections to the play than a first-time audience might. As we continue on this journey I’d like to share with you how The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu is impacting the people who are working to bring Ms. Kneubuhl’s words to life.
Meghan Williams – Production Assistant
Being involved with The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu has afforded me the opportunity to work in programming at NMAI. In that sense the play represents something bigger than the actual work of putting on the production. I’ve just completed my Master’s in Museum Studies and I focused on programming and education with a research interest in Aboriginal representation in museums. I also have experience in theater and this internship combines all these things. I literally did a dance when I got accepted to come here, and I love every day of it. This museum truly is a wonderful place to work.
What I connect to most about the play is that it deals with a well documented historical period in a different way. By showing us how contact may have looked for female characters, Victoria offers us a refreshing perspective. The play is not a complete picture of the time, nor does it claim historical accuracy, but it does offer a realistic possibility of what may have happened between the women involved. I’m always interested in the untold stories behind mainstream versions, which is what this play provides. Although ironically, in The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu the untold story is the mainstream account of history. I like that twist.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Hawaiian Organizations in Washington, DC
The following are descriptions of, and links to, local Hawaiian organizations:
Hawaii State Society of Washington DC
Hawaii State Society (HSS) serves as a bridge between Hawai'i and the Washington, D.C. community, and supports other organizations promoting the best interests of the State of Hawai'i. HSS brings together individuals and groups in a true `ohana (family) atmosphere, providing opportunities for friendship, sharing, support, and networking among its members. HSS is a social organization, dedicated to perpetuating the diverse cultures and traditions of Hawai'i's people.
http://www.hawaiistatesociety.org/
Office of Hawaiian Affairs
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA’s) mission is to mÄlama (protect) Hawai'i's people and environmental resources and OHA's assets, toward ensuring the perpetuation of the culture, the enhancement of lifestyle and the protection of entitlements of Native Hawaiians, while enabling the building of a strong and healthy Hawaiian people and nation, recognized nationally and internationally.
http://www.oha.org/
Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program
The Smithsonian Institution, the nation's premier complex of museums, has embarked on an historic journey to incorporate the meaningful elements of Asian Pacific American (APA) heritages into its museum and offices.
Today the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program works to better reflect the APA experience in Smithsonian exhibitions, programs, and research. It therefore improves the public's appreciation of the crucial roles that Asian Pacific Americans have played in American history and, simultaneously, empowers APA communities in their sense of inclusion within our national culture.
http://www.apa.si.edu/
Hawaii State Society of Washington DC
Hawaii State Society (HSS) serves as a bridge between Hawai'i and the Washington, D.C. community, and supports other organizations promoting the best interests of the State of Hawai'i. HSS brings together individuals and groups in a true `ohana (family) atmosphere, providing opportunities for friendship, sharing, support, and networking among its members. HSS is a social organization, dedicated to perpetuating the diverse cultures and traditions of Hawai'i's people.
http://www.hawaiistatesociety.org/
Office of Hawaiian Affairs
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA’s) mission is to mÄlama (protect) Hawai'i's people and environmental resources and OHA's assets, toward ensuring the perpetuation of the culture, the enhancement of lifestyle and the protection of entitlements of Native Hawaiians, while enabling the building of a strong and healthy Hawaiian people and nation, recognized nationally and internationally.
http://www.oha.org/
Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program
The Smithsonian Institution, the nation's premier complex of museums, has embarked on an historic journey to incorporate the meaningful elements of Asian Pacific American (APA) heritages into its museum and offices.
Today the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program works to better reflect the APA experience in Smithsonian exhibitions, programs, and research. It therefore improves the public's appreciation of the crucial roles that Asian Pacific Americans have played in American history and, simultaneously, empowers APA communities in their sense of inclusion within our national culture.
http://www.apa.si.edu/
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Missionary Women
It has been said that the lives of happy women –like happy nations– are never written.
– H. A. Carter, Kaahumanu, 1899.
Throughout The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu the Hawaiian women comment on the missionaries’ unhappiness, their sad faces and lack of smiles. Yet the audience witnesses a broader spectrum of Sybil and Lucy’s stories, their strengths and weaknesses, and their ups and downs. We see a side of missionary work that is not often told. As Patricia Grimshaw writes in Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii, missionary ventures to foreign lands are usually described as male endeavors. Yet, Sybil Bingham and Lucy Thurston were among eighty American Protestant women who made the journey to Hawaii between 1819 and mid-century.
In the decades before the foreign missions, women were central to social reform initiatives. They were charged with being moral crusaders, and often dealt with the lowlier parts of religious efforts such as working with drunks, prostitutes, urban poor, and slaves. Female missionaries also had sex-specific jobs and were first and foremost their husband’s support system, but they nevertheless played an important role. Grimshaw describes the missionary wife as a sexual companion, friend, and counselor for her husband. She would create a comforting domestic setting to allow her husband to focus on his work. Mission wives’ first priority was their home, but their importance went beyond their domestic abilities. Women were a symbol of peace and thus provided protection against violence. By creating Christian households women provided models for how the indigenous populations might live. In addition, as we see in The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu, women, especially those who had been teachers in America, could have their own mission service through schools for women and children (xi-7).
The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu is a narrative of what contact might have looked like through its female characters, whose stories are rarely told, and the result is very moving.
For more information see Patricia Grimshaw’s Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1989).
– H. A. Carter, Kaahumanu, 1899.
Throughout The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu the Hawaiian women comment on the missionaries’ unhappiness, their sad faces and lack of smiles. Yet the audience witnesses a broader spectrum of Sybil and Lucy’s stories, their strengths and weaknesses, and their ups and downs. We see a side of missionary work that is not often told. As Patricia Grimshaw writes in Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii, missionary ventures to foreign lands are usually described as male endeavors. Yet, Sybil Bingham and Lucy Thurston were among eighty American Protestant women who made the journey to Hawaii between 1819 and mid-century.
In the decades before the foreign missions, women were central to social reform initiatives. They were charged with being moral crusaders, and often dealt with the lowlier parts of religious efforts such as working with drunks, prostitutes, urban poor, and slaves. Female missionaries also had sex-specific jobs and were first and foremost their husband’s support system, but they nevertheless played an important role. Grimshaw describes the missionary wife as a sexual companion, friend, and counselor for her husband. She would create a comforting domestic setting to allow her husband to focus on his work. Mission wives’ first priority was their home, but their importance went beyond their domestic abilities. Women were a symbol of peace and thus provided protection against violence. By creating Christian households women provided models for how the indigenous populations might live. In addition, as we see in The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu, women, especially those who had been teachers in America, could have their own mission service through schools for women and children (xi-7).
The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu is a narrative of what contact might have looked like through its female characters, whose stories are rarely told, and the result is very moving.
For more information see Patricia Grimshaw’s Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1989).
Monday, April 20, 2009
Our Featured Playwright
Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl (Native Hawaiian/Samoan) lives and works in Honolulu. She has a master’s degree in Drama and Theater from the University of Hawai’i and has produced twelve plays, several of which have toured to Britain, America, the Pacific, and Asia. Her recent publications include Hawai’i Nei, an anthology of three plays, and Murder Casts a Shadow, a murder mystery set in 1930s Honolulu. She is a recipient of the Hawai’i Award for Literature.
Victoria will be at NMAI on Wednesday May 13th for a book reading, discussion, and book signing as part of the Vine Deloria, Jr. Native Writers Series. She will also be our featured guest at a brief talkback after the play's Saturday matinee performance on May 16 at 2:00pm.
Victoria will be at NMAI on Wednesday May 13th for a book reading, discussion, and book signing as part of the Vine Deloria, Jr. Native Writers Series. She will also be our featured guest at a brief talkback after the play's Saturday matinee performance on May 16 at 2:00pm.
Hana Hou!, the Magazine of Hawaiian Airlines, has recently published an engaging article about Victoria: http://www.hanahou.com/pages/magazine.asp?Action=DrawArticle&ArticleID=775&MagazineID=49
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Rehearsal Progress as of April 16, 2009
Our rehearsals are progressing nicely. For the first two weeks we did script work, where the cast, director, and stage manager sat around a table and read through the play. These rehearsals allowed the cast to become familiarized with their lines before getting up on stage. We made initial attempts to understand who each character is, and what each character wants, or, in stage talk, “what is their action.” Characters in plays try to achieve an objective. The missionaries in our play work to Christianize the Natives of Hawaii. Ka’ahumanu rules and leads her people at a very difficult time in Hawaiian history and gradually comes to embrace the Christian faith. Pali and Hannah serve in Ka’ahumanu’s inner circle and both become involved with their own conversion journeys. One of the focuses for our script work was locating each character’s individual conversions. Although the play's central conversion is Ka‘ahumanu’s decision to become Christian, each character has their own moments of conversion or change.
Last week we finished our script work and started blocking. For these rehearsals the actresses are still "on-book," meaning they have their scripts with them on stage. The goals for blocking rehearsals are for the actresses to get a feel for the stage and add movements to their lines, and for the production crew to work out entrances and exits, as well as the overall look of the scenes. The scene designer provided a working ground (or floor) plan that indicates to the director and actresses where Ka’ahumanu’s home is on stage, as well as where the missionaries house is located. Traffic patterns between these spaces as well as movements that happen when a character speaks directly to the audience are mapped out. Part of blocking is simply character traffic control!
The actresses are expected to have their lines memorized for Act I by April 21st and for Act II by April 27th at which time rehearsals will take place on stage, with no script; this phase of the rehearsal process is often called, “work-throughs.” Work-throughs are an opportunity for cast members to feel comfortable with their movement, character, actions, lines memorized, and the establishing of clear relationships among them as well as clear actions that are being portrayed to the audience yet to come. The “audience” during rehearsal is the director as well as the production staff. It is the director’s job to tell the playwright’s story clearly and to do the play justice – meaning that the playwright’s words, characters, story, and style of theatricality make sense so that the audience becomes engaged and believes what is happening on stage. Work-throughs are the first attempts at making this mighty task occur. It’s always important for us in our rehearsals to recall that we are not representing actual Hawaiian history, but Ms. Nalani Knuebuhl’s vision of a story composed of characters drawn from actual Hawaiian history.
Last week we finished our script work and started blocking. For these rehearsals the actresses are still "on-book," meaning they have their scripts with them on stage. The goals for blocking rehearsals are for the actresses to get a feel for the stage and add movements to their lines, and for the production crew to work out entrances and exits, as well as the overall look of the scenes. The scene designer provided a working ground (or floor) plan that indicates to the director and actresses where Ka’ahumanu’s home is on stage, as well as where the missionaries house is located. Traffic patterns between these spaces as well as movements that happen when a character speaks directly to the audience are mapped out. Part of blocking is simply character traffic control!
The actresses are expected to have their lines memorized for Act I by April 21st and for Act II by April 27th at which time rehearsals will take place on stage, with no script; this phase of the rehearsal process is often called, “work-throughs.” Work-throughs are an opportunity for cast members to feel comfortable with their movement, character, actions, lines memorized, and the establishing of clear relationships among them as well as clear actions that are being portrayed to the audience yet to come. The “audience” during rehearsal is the director as well as the production staff. It is the director’s job to tell the playwright’s story clearly and to do the play justice – meaning that the playwright’s words, characters, story, and style of theatricality make sense so that the audience becomes engaged and believes what is happening on stage. Work-throughs are the first attempts at making this mighty task occur. It’s always important for us in our rehearsals to recall that we are not representing actual Hawaiian history, but Ms. Nalani Knuebuhl’s vision of a story composed of characters drawn from actual Hawaiian history.
Tittle-tattle and Mischief Making
The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu depicts contact between missionaries and Native Hawaiians through the stories of five women. Although men are frequently discussed, their point of view does not drive the narrative. The audience is privy to how the women regarded each other, but not to what their male contemporaries thought of them. In Act I, Scene 4, Hannah chides fellow Hawaiian Pali for gossiping. “You’re nothing but a chicken,” she says, “clucking gossip all over the village.” Although the missionaries Sybil and Lucy are at times outspoken, their characters appear more reserved than those of the Hawaiian women. Yet, the play might sound a lot different if male characters appeared onstage. The following quote is an excerpt from U.S. Commissioner to the Hawaiian Kingdom David Lawrence Gregg’s diaries. Gregg suggests, nearly forty years after the initial voyage to the Sandwich Islands, that the missionaries were the worst gossips:
“Thus it is always with Honolulu society. It is full of jealousies and scandals. No one can live in it without subjecting his character to the severest test. The Missionaries are the worst gossips and the most inveterate scandal-mongers. Their wives and daughters are far beyond anything St. Paul ever condemned in the way of tittle-tattle and mischief making.” (1858)
Text courtesy of the Hawaiian Historical Society from The Diaries of David Lawrence Gregg: An American Diplomat in Hawaii, 1853-1858, edited by Pauline King (Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 1982).
“Thus it is always with Honolulu society. It is full of jealousies and scandals. No one can live in it without subjecting his character to the severest test. The Missionaries are the worst gossips and the most inveterate scandal-mongers. Their wives and daughters are far beyond anything St. Paul ever condemned in the way of tittle-tattle and mischief making.” (1858)
Text courtesy of the Hawaiian Historical Society from The Diaries of David Lawrence Gregg: An American Diplomat in Hawaii, 1853-1858, edited by Pauline King (Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 1982).
Monday, April 13, 2009
Hawaiian Gods
"This masterful sculpture of the Hawaiian god Kuka'ilimoku was created for a temple of the great warrior and chief Kamehameha I, who unified the Hawaiian islands at the beginning of the 19th century. Chants, offerings, and processions honored the god.Kuka'ilimoku, one of the many forms of the powerful and protective god Ku, became the favorite deity of Kamehameha I who was the supreme ruler of Hawai`i in the early 1800s. Kamehameha I built many temples for religious ceremonies dedicated to Kuka'ilimoku. After Kamehameha's death in 1819, his son Liholiho (Kamehameha II) succeeded him. He abolished Kapu, a political and religious system with strict rules governing social behavior, ended the worship of Kuka'ilimoku and other deities, and called for the destruction of temples. As a result, this sculpture is one of only three large carved images of Kuka'ilimoku that have survived."
Image: Kuka’ilimoku (temple image), early 19th century. Artist not identified. Hawai‘i. Breadfruit wood (Artocarpus incisus).
Image and text courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum’s online database, available at: http://pem.org/collections/
Consider the above text in contrast to Ka‘ahumanu’s speech in Act 1 Scene 2:
“Here is why I, Ka‘ahumanu, Kuhin Nui (co-ruler) and widow of Kamehameha, have done these things. For many years now we have seen these haole, these foreign men among us. We know that they break the kapu (taboo) laws. Do the gods come to punish them? No! Some of the women have gone to the ships and have eaten with these haole men. Do the gods come to punish them? No! So why should it be that they will come to punish us at all? I think these beliefs are nothing, false. And here is another thing. We know where the punishment comes from. It does not come from gods. It comes from men. It comes from the priests who grow greedy for power. And who is it who hates most this kapu law of eating? We, women of the ali‘i (chiefly class). We do not want a lowly place any more, and the men of the priesthood will see this! You should have seen the fear in their faces when we sat to eat. Hewahewa made a great prayer to the gods. Liholiho, the king, approached the women’s table. Many of the faces in the crowd became as white as the full moon. Liholiho sat with us to eat. He ate and the people waited in silence, waited for the terrible wrath of the gods … which never came! Then a great cry rose from the women. “Ai noa (free eating), ‘ai noa! The kapu laws are ended! The gods are false.”
“Here is why I, Ka‘ahumanu, Kuhin Nui (co-ruler) and widow of Kamehameha, have done these things. For many years now we have seen these haole, these foreign men among us. We know that they break the kapu (taboo) laws. Do the gods come to punish them? No! Some of the women have gone to the ships and have eaten with these haole men. Do the gods come to punish them? No! So why should it be that they will come to punish us at all? I think these beliefs are nothing, false. And here is another thing. We know where the punishment comes from. It does not come from gods. It comes from men. It comes from the priests who grow greedy for power. And who is it who hates most this kapu law of eating? We, women of the ali‘i (chiefly class). We do not want a lowly place any more, and the men of the priesthood will see this! You should have seen the fear in their faces when we sat to eat. Hewahewa made a great prayer to the gods. Liholiho, the king, approached the women’s table. Many of the faces in the crowd became as white as the full moon. Liholiho sat with us to eat. He ate and the people waited in silence, waited for the terrible wrath of the gods … which never came! Then a great cry rose from the women. “Ai noa (free eating), ‘ai noa! The kapu laws are ended! The gods are false.”
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