'Ko'olau' Will Play September 18- October 5 at La MaMa

"Ko'olau," designed and directed by Tom Lee (www.tomleeprojects.com), is an intimate and inventive puppet performance based on a now-legendary story of Hawai'i in the 1890s. The title character, Kaluaiko'olau (hereafter Ko'olau), hides with his wife and son in the Kalalau Valley of Kauai as he tries to elude the sheriff's men and escape deportation to a leper colony. The story captures both a fundamental struggle for personal freedom and the triumph of unconditional love in the most difficult circumstances. Tom Lee addresses these powerful themes with puppetry that evokes the poetry of the Hawaiian language and the natural environment of the islands. His production utilizes raw, handcarved puppets in the kuruma ningyo style (wheeled puppet theater of Japan--unusual to see in New York) and live shadow and video projection inspired by Hawaiian woodcut carving. The performers are four puppeteers, two musicians and two projectionists who animate live shadow and video images onto a screen at the back of the stage.

The performance takes its title from Ko'olau, a native Hawaiian paniolo (cowboy) from Waimea, Kauai, however the audience experiences his struggle through the eyes of Pi'ilani, his wife and companion until his dying day. After learning he had contracted Hansen's Disease (leprosy) in 1892, fearing exile to a leper colony, Ko'olau fled with his wife their son, Kaleimanu, to Kalalau, a remote valley on the rugged northern coast of Kaua'i. Here the family lived until a deputy sheriff from Waimea attempted to arrest him. Ko'olau shot the man and two soldiers of the Provisional Government army sent to capture him. The family lived in the valley until first Kaleimanu, and then Ko'olau died of their disease. Pi'ilani buried both of them in secret and returned to her home in Kekaha. In 1906, Pi'ilani recorded her story in the Hawaiian language with John Sheldon, an American journalist. The volume was entitled "Ka Moolelo Oiaio O Kaluaikoolau" (The True Story of Kaluaikoolau). Pi'ilani's retelling remains one of very few texts from the period written in Hawaiian from a Hawaiian perspective. The story was the inspiration for renowned author Jack London's "Koolau the Leper" and Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.S. Merwin's "The Folding Cliffs."

Mr. Lee explains that Pi'ilani's source text is nothing like a diatribe. Instead it is a deeply moving expression of Aloha (the nuanced Hawaiian word for, among other things, love). Her recollection is filled with a deep and mournful love for her husband and son, and the awesome power and beauty of the place that sheltered them as fugitives. Pi'ilani's story also does not focus on leprosy, but rather on the struggle of the family to survive together. Jack London's text, on the other hand, is "sensationalist and ignorant. It made Ko'olau out to be a monster," says Lee. Though the story of Ko'olau is that of a rebel, it is also the story of love, commitment and sacrifice of the highest order.

He reflects, "People's idea of Hawai'i is a paradise, without a sense of history or a tradition to go with it." Lee wants to show a part of Hawai'i that people don't see, and to shine a light on the long tradition of struggle in its contact with Western society. In Hawaiian, leprosy was called "the separating sickness", because it tore families asunder as portions were committed to leper colonies. He writes, "In the end, this story belongs to Pi'ilani and her family and we offer this production as a gift to their memory. Me ke aloha pumehana."

Lee grew up on O'ahu and first learned of Ko'olau during a visit to a family friend on Kaua'i. He then read W.S. Merwin's epic poem of the story, followed by Frances Frazier's translation of Pi'ilani's original story before beginning his own research on the project. Though not a native speaker of Hawaiian, he aims to create a visual representation of the Hawaiian language through puppetry. He points out that the language has a small vocabulary compared to English, but makes up for that with incredible nuance. This quality led him to two very specific choices of technique for the play:

The two major performance styles in Tom Lee's "Ko'olau" are shadow puppets and cart puppets. Gone are the usual Indonesian designs of classical shadow puppetry and the intricately carved and painted faces of Kuruma Ningyo. These are replaced by the imagery of Hawaiian print design, which is seen most dramatically in the production's woodcut projections and in the roughly-carved faces of the puppets. But a crucial aspect of Japanese cart puppetry remains: the style of wheeled cart puppetry aims to capture the finesse of Bunraku, which takes three manipulators, and make it achievable for one manipulator. In "Ko'olau," the nuanced manipulation of kuruma ningyo "fills in" the rawness of the faces, which Tom Lee has styled after Hawai'an woodcuts. Then the production also injects live video projections into a backdrop of slides and recorded segments, enabling the creation of a dynamic shadow world.

Music is composed by Yukio Tsuji with Bill Ruyle and played by Tsuji and Ruyle. Both are noted La MaMa composer/musicians and members of La MaMa's Great Jones Repertory. The music is a combination of original percussion, shakuhachi and hammer dulcimer, with sections inspired by the compositions of Queen Liliuokalani, the Hawaiian kingdom's last monarch, who reigned during the late 1800s, when the kingdom was being overthrown by a group of American businessmen. The strains of her writing in the score evoke the nostalgic nature of that period.

Tom Lee is the son of a Chinese-American father from Hawai'i and a mother from upstate New York. (She was of Eastern European ancestry--Tom's grandparents were from Poland and Austria). He grew up passionate about Asian theater forms and sustained this interest after his career turned toward puppetry. He is co-director of the St. Ann's Puppet Lab, a developmental collective for new adult and experimental puppet theater, and a principal puppeteer in "Madama Butterfly" at the Metropolitan Opera, directed by Anthony Minghella with puppets by Blind Summit Theatre. However, his primary "creative home" is La MaMa. There he has displayed unusual ability as a designer, puppeteer and actor, working in many styles, with such companies as The Great Jones Repertory, Yara Arts Group, Kinding Sindaw, Yoshiko Chuma and The School of Hard Knocks and Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre. He has assisted puppet artists Theadora Skipitares, Jane Catherine Shaw, Dan Hurlin and Basil Twist. His original puppet theater works include "Hoplite Diary," "Punch of the Dead" and "Odysseus and Ajax," all at La MaMa. He has performed around the world in La MaMa's touring productions and at Yale Repertory, Second Stage Theater, PS 122, RedCat and The Duke 42nd Street, among others.

This production was developed at the Rhodopi International Theater Collective, Smolyan, Bulgaria, in 2007 and at the Chocolate Factory Theater, L.I.C., Queens. Reviewing a workshop production at the latter, Nytheatre.com (Richard Hinojosa) wrote, "Creator/director Tom Lee excels at creating beautiful snapshots on stage. He builds these pictures with slow and deliberate actions such as the gentle placing of flowers or the weary plodding of puppets over puppeteers transformed into mountains." The reviewer praised the subtlety of the puppet manipulation, which gave delicacy to the "simple wood-carved faces" of the puppets. There was also pointed praise for the score, video projections and live shadow animation going on behind the screen. The conceit of performers interacting with each other and with set pieces in the video was deemed "a brilliant way to apply puppetry to film." The review concluded, "Ko'olau is beautifully conceived and performed. It makes you want to go to Hawaii-not as a tourist but rather as a favorite son."

The puppeteers are Matthew Acheson, Marina Celander, Frankie Cordero and Yoko Myoi. The live shadow and video projectionists are Tom Lee and Miranda Hardy. Lighting design is by Miranda Hardy.

In 2005, supported by the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers, Mr. Lee spent two months studying traditional and contemporary puppetry throughout Japan. In particular, he studied with Koryu Nishikawa V, headmaster of Hachiouji Kuruma Ningyo (wheeled puppet theatre company). He has also received support from The Jim Henson Foundation, The TCG/ITI Travel Grant Program, The Pennsylvlania Council for the Arts, The Puppet Lab at St. Ann's Warehouse and artist residences at Sarah Lawrence College, The Rhodophi International Theatre Collective (Bulgaria) and Buffalo Seminary. Mr. Lee teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Writing on Tom Lee's "Hoplite Diary," Eileen Blumenthal, author of "Puppetry: A World History," recently called the piece "An extraordinary piece of theater--huge in scope and filled with exquisite detail and emotion. Tom Lee is an exciting new talent."

This production is supported in part by the Jim Henson Foundation, The TCG/ITI Travel Grant Program, Hachioji Kuruma Ningyo (wheeled puppet theater of Japan) and Yara Arts Group.

Tom Lee will dramatize the legend of Ko'olau, a modern epic of Hawai'i, in a puppet theater work at La MaMa from
September 18 to October 5, 2008 at La MaMa E.T.C. (The Club), 74A East Fourth Street, Manhattan Presented by La MaMa E.T.C. in association with Yara Arts Group First week: Th-Sat at 10:00 pm; Sun at 5:30 pm. Second and third weeks: Fri and Sat at 10:00 pm; Sun at 5:30 pm.

Tickets $18; box office (212) 475-7710. Online ticketing available at www.lamama.org. The show runs approx 60 min. Critics are invited on or after September 18.

 

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