Five years after COVID-19 forced the closure of the public entertainment state, they are mainly curtains on the large power outage.
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A crowd recently met for a Hawaiian music evening in Kawika Kahiapo to mark the 17th anniversary of the Kana Kana Kana Pila grille at the edge of the seaside resort. The whole weekend was exhausted when the group of actors opened “My name is Asher Lev” at Brad Powell Theater on Friday.
Thursday, Kumu Kahua also expects a closed window opening for “the magic of Polly Amnesia”.
The Hawaii Shakespeare festival plans to get closer to the place where it was before COVID-19 with the 2025 season opening on July 11 with R. Kevin Garcia Doyle realizing “Comedy of Errors” at The Arts at Marks Garage.
The Blue notes Hawaii and the Hawaii Theater Center are back in full force with everything, comics and “inherited acts” to the Hawaiian music stars awarded Na Hoku Hanohano, Reggae and Jazz. Andy Bumatai and Augie T joined for a Brunch of Mother’s Day at the Blue Note, and Joe Moore and Pat Sajak Co-Star in “Prescription: Murder” at Hawaii Theater opening on July 31; Moore and Sajak give all the profits to the theater.
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Kapena – Kelly Boy’s Kelly Boy’s family group from Lima, her son Kapena de Lima and the girls Kalenaku and Lilo – returned full time to Waikiki and elsewhere. De Lima and his daughters also teach Kapen School of Music in Kaneohe again.
None of this was guaranteed when Honolulu was dark, and places like Diamond Head Theater were particularly affected. The Hawaiian production of the theater of “The Bodyguard” – with the Broadway veteran, Lindsay Roberts, with Rachel Brown – was two days before the opening when the plans were disturbed by the locking of COVVI -19.
The artistic director of the DHT, John Rampage, said: “At first it would only be two weeks, then it was a month. We had Lindsay here. I asked him to ask him:” Can you stay a little longer if it comes back? “”
But, he said, they quickly realized that “it was not going to happen anytime soon, and everything would be on hold for a long time.”
Roberts returned home to New York, the distribution dissolved and the historic theater was closed. Executive Rampage and DHT Director Deena Dray began to look for alternatives – “Not necessarily to earn money, but to keep the name of Diamond Head Theater in the minds of people.”
“There was no long -term plan because no one knew what to plan,” explains Rampage. “So we took the filming stars (students) online on Zoom. Then, we had the idea of making Sunset concerts in the parking lot (of the theater) – that no one expected to become the huge success that it was.
Survival mode
Five years after the 19th after the 19th, the executive director of the DHT, Trevor Tamashiro, uses annual audience surveys to learn what shows that the main audience of DHT wishes to see; One of the best choices of the 2024 survey, “Les Misérables”, was planned for the 2025-2026 season.
The other major community theater groups in Honolulu have also learned the lessons of their COVID-19 struggles.
Eric Nemoto, founder and president of Tag, recalls Covid-19 as “one of the greatest challenges that Tag had been confronted with his 27th anniversary”.
“Because Tag had endured so much growing pain over the years, we have not feared that,” said Nemoto.
Nemoto said Tag endured the closure for games in person by surviving his reserves and new grants.
“We had online productions to continue the momentum, but they didn’t really bring real income,” he said.
When the interior productions were prohibited during COVID-19, the director general of Kumu Kahua, Donna Blanchard, initially planned to move the production of Renaissance of her group of “the conversion of Ka’humanu” to the park adjacent to the Kumu Kahua theater on the street merchant, but the logistics have proven efforts and distribution members for any exhibitions to the virus.
Kumu Kahua finally presented the show in two online performances in August 2020, which paved the way for a broader commitment to online programming.
Blanchard is now “prudently optimistic” on the future of Kumu Kahua.
“We are still recovering. We returned to a very different Chinese district, and for a while, we had to hire security, which was a big piece of money that was not part of our (pre-countryic) budget, “she said. “We are not returning to a pre-kitchen number of ticket buyers and subscription, so we always look at our money and work with a smaller budget to try to get back to the real new standard that will be.”
Lessons learned
Artists and entertainment companies and Hawaii places are still based on lessons learned during the pandemic to shape their future.
The Hawaii Shakespeare Festival’s Founder Tony PisCullli Had Several MONTHS TO PREPARE FOR A FULL SEASON of Live Zoom Theater in the Summer of 2020. By the Time the Third Show of the Season, “The Merry Wives of Wivesor,” Opened on Aug. Aug. Aug. 14, 2020, The Cast include online Actors from Three Mainland States as well as in Hawaii, and their performances we supported with Visual Effects and animation that would not have been possible in a traditional live, production in theater.
“It was important for us to do something as close to the theater as we could go through the Internet,” said Pisuculli. “We have seen Covid’s challenge as an opportunity to do what we could in the face of adversity.”
Without any future income, the president and chief executive officer of Hawaii Theater, Gregory Dunn, had to dismiss almost all the staff.
“We ended up being closed for 22 consecutive months, and during this period, we provided more than 350 live programs that have reached millions of people worldwide,” said Dunn.
The artists of Hawaii – singers, musicians, actors – shared their music online to strengthen the spirits and earn money during locking. The singer / keyboardist Jeannette Trevias went to Facebook live one day a week – then two, then three, then with Johnny Valentine as a weekly guest.
Lehua Kalima Alvarez is committed to publishing a new song on Facebook daily; She also teamed up with Shawn Pimenta for a live weekly program where they played audience requests.
Hoku Zuttermeister took requests for classic Hawaiian songs and hapa hapa while he sang and played in his backyard. Sunway Sunwei gathered the members of his group for a complete concert outside with each artist positioned more than 6 feet from the others.
Bryan Tolentino presented his new album online in preview. Kristian Lei introduced a parody on the theme of Covid-19 of the success of Keith Whitley in 1986, “Ten feet from there”, she entitled “Six feet of there”. Violinist Duane Padilla used shared screen technology to become a men’s violin quartet.
When Kapena went from full -time work not to work, the group began to do concerts twice a week in the “Kelly Boy” fair in Lima.
“After working for more than 20 years in Waikiki, we had to feel that we were doing something,” said Lima. “I was preparing, would take a shower, went out, put my jewelry, put my wedding ring, put my aloha shirt.”
He said he had also put Cologne, who was part of his routine.
“My children were going”, dad, you don’t have to put Cologne. It is not a smell-vision, “said Lima, who said he thought it was important to treat his place of origin as a hotel concert.