Outreach > Performance
The University of Hawaii's Asian Theatre Program is nationally and internationally recognized as the world's leading center for Asian theatre study and research. It has attained this status by providing students and scholars with unique training, performance, and research opportunities on a regular basis. Each year, intensive training in a selected form of Asian and cross-cultural performance is provided by renowned master artists and teachers, culminating in an authentically-staged English-language production. Undergraduate students, graduate students and scholars engage simultaneously in performance study and research, producing internationally-available documentation of both practical and theoretical results.
Here's some of the projects of the Asian Theatre Program!
A (Balinese) Tempest
With support from the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, the UH Department of Theatre & Dance presented A (Balinese) Tempest at Kennedy Theatre from January 25 - February 3, 2008. In preparation for this production, 52 students participated in six months of intensive training in Balinese music (gamelan), dance, and shadow theatre during the Fall of 2007. The training and rehearsal period culminated in six public performances that drew an audience totaling 2,376 people.
The production combined shadow theatre with live dancers to create a cross-cultural staging of Shakespeare's Tempest, using a style pioneered by visiting artist Larry Reed. This innovative adaptation of Shakespeare's most musical and magical play is about a sorcerer and dethroned Milanese duke (Prospero), who has been banished with his daughter Miranda to an enchanted island. Reed fused Balinese and Elizabethan elements with his hallmark shadow-casting method, which utilized a giant screen and live performers to create a magical shadow theatre performance. The production also featured live musical accompaniment by the UH Balinese gamelan ensemble under the direction of visiting artist and musical director I. Nyoman Sumandhi, an internationally known dalang (i.e, a Balinese puppet master) and master of traditional Balinese music, dance and choreography.
The week-long performance run garnered mainstream press coverage with previews and reviews in both major Honolulu papers, plus coverage and reviews from two local TV news stations. The outreach component of this project included school performances at the Maui Arts and Culture Center for approximately 600 K-12 school children.
The project was organized and produced by Professor Kirstin Pauka, faculty in the Asian Theatre Program and Acting Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies during the period of the course and performance.
Luck and Loss: Manadin’s Gamble
Manoa’s Kennedy Theatre hosted Luck and Loss: Manadin’s Gamble, a traditional Indonesian Randai in English in January and February 2008. This West Sumatran folk play featured martial arts, dance, singing, music and pants-slapping percussion. Directed and translated by Kirstin Pauka, Luck and Loss: Manadin's Gamble is a coming-of-age story about love, gambling and adventure. It is a tale of romance, mischief and combat that is encased in percussive and energetic dance sequences.
This film showcases the Randai theater of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, one of over 250 different ethnic groups in the Indonesian archipelago. Randai is a folk theater tradition of the Minangkabau ethnic group which incorporates music, singing, dance, drama and the silat martial art. Randai is usually performed for traditional ceremonies and festivals, and complex stories may span a number of nights. It is performed as a theatre-in-the-round to achieve an equality and unity between audience members and the performers. Randai originated early in the 20th century out of fusion of local martial arts, story-telling and other performance traditions.Men originally played both the male and female characters in the story, but since the 1960s women have also participated. A vibrant and exciting composite theater form, Randai incorporates storytelling, dance, music, and martial arts into a unique blend of performing arts. One of the highlights of Randai is experiencing the interplay between the dancer and musicians in the segments that break up the short dramatic exchanges.
Randai also offers insights into the indigenous martial arts form silek and is of interest to martial artists in general. It will be of great value to students and teachers in world theater and dance, in Asian studies, and in cultural studies.
The project was organized and produced by Professor Kirstin Pauka, faculty in the Asian Theatre Program at the University of Hawaii.