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Talent on display

In Texas, you will find a few counties that have highly advanced high school football programs. The same might be said for basketball in Kentucky and Indiana. Here in Maui County, we excel in advanced high school performing arts programs. At the close of each school year, the talented seniors of Maui have a final opportunity to showcase their creative skills before heading off to college. Over the next two weeks, three Maui high schools will mount their 'a hui kaua' performances of the 2014-15 school year, including Seabury Hall, and Baldwin and King Kekaulike high schools.Seabury Hall ...

‘Bye Bye Birdie’

I doubt if I would be writing a weekly theater column were it not for my mother's love of theater. She began dragging my father to musicals in the late '60s, and by the '70s, I was taken to see "George M!," "Pippin," "Grease" and many other hit shows of that era.While a high school student in Ohio, my mom attended her first Broadway show, "Bye Bye Birdie." She saved all of her programs, and I have a vivid memory of the "Bye Bye Birdie" playbill. Just four years after the play's premiere, Baldwin High School launched its drama department with "Bye Bye Birdie," directed by Sue Ann Loudon. ...

Putting the Spring into dance

'Spring Extravaganza' at the MACC features three separate shows: The 2014-15 theatrical season has been an unparalleled year for dance on Maui. In the past seven months alone, 10 different dance companies have been in performance, most recently last weekend's Seabury Hall "Dance Showcase." This weekend, two more companies will take the stage in Castle Theater at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center as part of Maui Academy of Performing Art's annual "Spring Extravaganza."From Bandaloop's dancing on the ceiling, Kyle Abraham's hip-hop ballet adaptation of "Boyz n the Hood" and Rosy Simas' ...

Alternating actors add twist to ‘Brighton Beach’

During the pre-show announcement at "Brighton Beach Memoirs," director Ricky Jones used the term "actor's workshop" to describe the Maui OnStage production. It is, but it is also a first-rate depiction on a classic American play.The workshop aspect that he is referring to is eight actors sharing four roles in 24 combinations of the cast over the three-week run. I was able to see a few versions of the shuffled cast over last weekend, and although it is difficult not to have favorites, the entire cast offers wonderful interpretations.In the role of Nora, the oldest sister or the family, ...

Maui OnStage presents ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’

In the summer of 1984, I spent 24 hours of guy time in New York City with my father. The day included visits to Grand Central Station, Central Park, Times Square, Greenwich Village, Battery Park, Brooklyn, Harlem, Staten Island, a view of a scaffold-covered Statue of Liberty from the top of the World Trade Center, dinner at a new restaurant called the Hard Rock Cafe, a monster three-run homer by Dave Winfield, and Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York" as we exited Yankee Stadium.One on the biggest Broadway hits at the time was "Brighton Beach Memoirs," which originally starred ...

‘Shoyu on Rice’

Quality performing arts companies establish an artistic niche within their community. On Maui for example, the Maui Academy of Performing Arts generally presents dramatic plays and musicals, while Maui OnStage specializes in musical comedies. On Oahu, Kumu Kahua Theatre, under the direction of Harry Wong, has been presenting original plays by Hawaiian authors about Hawaiian life for Hawaiian people since the early 1970s. Over the past decade, the Maui Arts & Cultural Center has invited KKT to bring its unique productions, such as "Flowers of Hawai'i" by Lee Cataluna and "Koi, Like ...