Hawaii Nei: Island Plays

by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl

Hawaii Nei brings together three plays by one of Hawaii's finest playwrights. A compassionate portrait of early nineteenth- century Hawaii, The Conversion of Kaahumanu charts the lives of five women during the traumatic, transforming events that followed Western contact. Set in post-World War II Hawaii, Emmalehua tells the story of a young Hawaiian woman struggling to preserve a cherished cultural heritage in a world eager to forget the past and embrace the new American dream. Through history, humor, and a whodunnit plot, the past and present collide in Ola Na Iwi, which explores the issues surrounding the treatment of indigenous human remains.

Genres: Plays

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2002

About the author

Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl is a well-known Honolulu playwright and author. She holds a master’s degree in drama and theatre from the University of Hawai`i. Her plays have been performed in Hawai`i and the continental United States and have toured to Britain, Asia, and the Pacific. An anthology of her work, Hawai`i Nei: Island Plays, is available from the University of Hawai`i Press. Ms. Kneubuhl’s mystery novel Murder Casts a Shadow, will be published this fall by the University of Hawaii Press. She is currently the writer and coproducer for the television series Biography Hawaii. In 1994, she was the recipient of the prestigious Hawai`i Award for Literature and in 2006 received the Eliot Cades Award for Literature.

Reviews

[RobdawgReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being an osteologist and anthropologist, the last play, Ola Nā Iwi (The Bone Lives), was very powerful and still relevant 30 years after NAGPRA. I wish I had been assigned this as a reading during University. It would have contributed very much to the discussions concerning "Who owns the past?" If I ever become a professor, I will 💯 make this part of my curriculum. I highly recommend all three of the plays.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Conversion of Ka’ahumanu 5*
Beautiful period piece about the conversion of Hawaii. I loved the juxtaposition of the ethnic Hawaiians and the Caucasian Christian’s. Beautifully written.

P.S. I would love to stage a performance of this, but I don’t think my high school drama program could pull this off.

Emmalehua 3*
I would need this one taught to me. I think I was missing too many cultural beats to fully appreciate it. I liked what I did gather from the play, but this would have been better if I was part of a class discussing it. The theme of modernization in postwar Hawaii and balancing modernization with tradition really stuck out, too.

Ola Na Iwi 3*
This was very much a mystery that was fun to watch unravel. I liked the overall themes of treatment of indigenous people and remains, and I know that is a problem a lot of museums are still grappling with.

[ML Character · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to read a slew of plays because I'm behind in my 100 book challenge, but somehow still ended up reading an anthology of 3 because it was there, I was interested and so on. I really like these plays- they're fairly "straight" stage plays, but ably done, with a non-sentimentality and a refreshing lack of hard angle -- just seemingly trying to sort out the different strands and details of what it means to be Hawaiian today- post colonial, multi-island mixed up, hybridized and so on. Of course the one about a theatre company and fake bones is the best one. Missionary ladies can't hold a candle...

[anna]

read for harvard extension

read "The Conversion of Ka'ahumanu"