by Abe Louise Young
On west side of the island of Oahu stands Nanakuli High and Intermediate School, a large building nestled on sixteen acres in a green valley. Eighty percent of its student body has native Hawaiian ancestry. Though rich with natural beauty, family history, and cultural tradition, the area is challenged by social and economic problems. The school has not passed No Child Left Behind standards and struggles to get by.
Yet for over nineteen years, Nanakuli High and Intermediate School Performing Arts Center (NPAC) has engaged students in exceptional productions. An inter-age group—from fourth graders to seniors—has staged more than seventy-five shows, and travels island-wide to perform, sing, dance, and dramatize for community members.
The work is both entertaining and educational. Each year, the group does three productions: a musical revue, a Broadway musical, and a dramatic play. They also devise educational plays and videos that deal with serious social issues like domestic violence, date rape, substance abuse, truancy, diabetes, and other difficult problems.
This group is changing perceptions about their low-income community and faltering school. The student performers themselves describe their bond as a ‘family,’ where no one is rejected, and all are welcome.
This as-told-to story collected by WKCD writer Abe Louise Young presents the voices of NPAC students Shannon, Chanel, and Nathaniel, along with NPAC’s founder and director, Robin Kitsu.
CLICK HERE for interview with Robin Kitsu.
Nathaniel
I joined Theater because there was a girl that I liked there, and I wanted to get closer to her. I didn’t get the girl, but then I learned about being in this family. Most kids don’t really have a family. When they join this place, they get a family, to rely on, to build a relationship with.
Shannon
The first day that you are in the program, you are not excluded. You come to the doors and you’re welcomed by open hands, by all the other cast members. You don’t have to fit in, you can just be yourself here.
We believe that if you’re looking to be a star here, this isn’t the program for you. We all treat each other equally, and we support each other in every way possible. If you need help with scripts, memorizing lines, emotions, dance moves, life. There’s a cycle where we can help each other.
We look at Mr. Kitsu as a father, and we’re his kids, and we’re here to help each other out.
Chanel
For me it’s also a family. When I started, I was very quiet, keep-to-myself. Being in this family of people who are very outgoing rubs off on you.
Shannon
With this theater work we’re able to tackle a lot of important and serious issues.
Some of the shows we’ve done that impacted others were “Voices of Hope” and “A Time of Giving.” These shows were benefit performances for victims of Hurricane Katrina and for families that lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina. All our proceeds went to the American Red Cross. We have that sense of appreciation because we are able to take our skills, our abilities, and give back.
Nathaniel
We do a lot of touring shows to schools, the malls, the shopping centers. We get hired by the Federal Credit Union, and to lots of different gigs around the island. Those performances show people outside of the community what people from Nanakahuli can do. It changes the reputation of our school. It gives them something positive to look at
instead of the negative stereotypes.
Shannon
Another one of the plays that we had to do was called Crashing. That play was based on student’s real life experiences. It was based on abuse, bullying, and real-life problems that we experience. It was hard to create because we are a family here, and hearing other people’s problems was like them coming out to us. For us to endure that kind of pain from everyone’s stories was difficult. We can all relate. We have all gone through some of those experiences. The beginning of the process involved some kids breaking down because they didn’t want to talk about their difficult stories.
Mr. Kitsu
The process began with talking about some of the issues that this community faces. We incorporated journal writing into that, anonymous journals. After that, we did short, non-dialogue exercises, like tableaus. We’d throw out an issue and say, what does this look like?
In their tableaux, violence kept coming up. So we talked about that. Is this what our community is facing? From there, we worked with the journals, and solidified a script.
There were several students who wrote about being sexually abused. We actually had an outside teacher from Honolulu Theater for Youth who was assisting with the youth.
The students had the choice about whether or not to share their stories on stage, and one of the students did decide to do that.
The HTY person said, “We look at this as an artistic piece. But for the person who wrote that, it is life. Imagine going through it again and again every day in rehearsal.” It’s not just art, but for a lot of things that are brought up here, it’s student’s real lives. That was an important awareness for me as an educator to have.
Chanel
My grandfather passed away in the summer. Mr Kitsu pulled me aside and asked me if I was ready, ready to get back onstage. And I decided yes. That was a skill I learned: I wanted to push on.
Shannon
You need to create that relationship between the teacher and the student. If you don’t do that, you won’t get along. In the beginning of the year, having Mister yell at you, it’s like a teacher yelling at a student. Now I realize why Mister was doing that. It’s so I can better myself onstage and offstage as a person.
Now I can be close to him, and come to him for advice, on college and stuff like that. He’s been an enormous part of my life. He’s a mentor as well as a father. Like Nathaniel was saying, we don’t have a family to support us. Here, I was able to find that family, father figure. If it wasn’t for Mister, I could have been a person to substance abuse. For us, we want someone who can push us, who can give us this motivation.
Nathaniel
For most of my other classes, teachers give out evaluations in the beginning of the year. They say it is to learn about the students, to learn how the students learn. But almost all of them don’t even follow it. They don’t change their teaching style. For most of my other classes, the students dislike the teachers. They write bad stuff about them. They don’t respect them at all. Much of that is because the teachers don’t respect the students. We respect Mister as our teacher because he respects us. He puts so much of his own life and his own time into the program for us. We don’t expect all teachers to be like Mr. Kitsu. But we need more teachers who try a little harder, and put their lives into their classrooms.
Shannon
Mister has taken every student in the program under his wing and has been able to mature all of us. Responsibility, commitment are the lessons he puts on us. Being able to learn those things in high school gives us the foundation we need for when we leave high school.
Shannon
My mom thought that me being in drama was very wrong. My background in my family was that we participated in sports. I had to decide if I wanted to be in the program, or go out for volleyball. It was like a war inside me. When I went home that night, and told my mom what I had chosen, it was kind of hard for her to wrestle with. In the end she realized that what I want to do is perform.
Chanel
For me, growing up, the picture my parents and my grandparents put in my head
was that I do sports, and do hula, and go to a mainland college or University of Hawaii, and I can fit in. This program really does make you stand out. When I first joined, I was debating whether I should join in or not. But it was so much fun that I didn’t picture myself doing anything else after that.
At the end of the year, Mr. Kitsu called us into his office and he told us how we grew through the program. He told me about how I had blossomed. I saw how the people around me had changed, but I hadn’t really noticed how I had changed. When he told me that, it was like, Wow. Yes. I did!
