Fourth in a series
LAIE, Hawaii — A play within a play, the story behind the show — what an audience sees on the stage of live theater has long been acknowledged as only a sampling of many stories that had to converge before the house lights dimmed and the spots lit up.
The night show at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii is no exception, and is likely the collecting point for scenarios not found at most live theaters.
The Pacific Theater
The covered, open-air, 2,675-seat theater itself is unique. Nestled among the PCC's Polynesian villages, palm trees, lagoon, IMAX theater and other attractions, the Pacific Theater features a stage populated with a four-story backdrop of volcanoes, fountains and waterfalls. Animation that helps tell the show's story is projected on two large screens designed to look like the sails of a Polynesian canoe. Stage entrances are formed to resemble cave openings, and backstage areas include a room large enough for fireknife dancers warming up their act to practice without hitting a wall or ceiling.
An automated conveyor system two stories tall organizes hundreds of exotic costumes, the likes of which would never be seen backstage of a Broadway theater.
More than 100 performers filter through the iron gate that separates the BYU-Hawaii campus from the PCC each night to stage the largest Polynesian revue in the world, according to the PCC, which also claims bragging rights as the largest paid attraction in all of Hawaii since 1977.
Entertaining tourists; supporting students
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints launched the PCC as a nonprofit enterprise in 1963 in a symbiotic relationship with the adjacent Church College of Hawaii, now Brigham Young University-Hawaii. The enterprise preserves and displays traditional Polynesian culture from the islands of Hawaii, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand and Tahiti. But its core objective is a payroll to help BYU-Hawaii students pay for their education.
The university provides scholarships to many of the 600-plus students who work at the PCC. Those scholarships and the student performers' part-time work at the PCC help the students return to their homes throughout the Pacific debt-free when they graduate.
A majority of the students working at the PCC conduct tours, perform in the villages representing the six island cultures or work in the gift shops or restaurants. But the crowning event of a visitor's day at the center is the night show with a cast comprising more than 100 students.
Marketing the PCC's signature event
The construct of the night show changes from time to time with each show seeing a lifespan anywhere from five years to the record 14-year run of the most recent show, "Horizons: Where the Sea Meets the Sky."
Producers began building a new show three years ago and brought in one of the LDS Church's most notable writer-directors, David Warner, as a consultant. Warner previously directed the Nauvoo Pageant, "Savior of the World" and "Light of the World," produced to run during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
"He asked, 'What do you want?' " recalls Delsa Moe, the night show's producer. "Something different from anything else here in Hawaii. Something to compel the audience to come back again and again," was the response. "We want the audience to feel better about who they are and hopeful about who they can become."
The early planning did not take place around a restaurant table with notes scribbled on napkins. "A lot of fasting and prayer and temple attendance went into it," Moe said. PCC Marketing Director Ray Magalei said surveys of former visitors indicated they wanted to better understand the legends the show was presenting.
So an early decision in the show's remake was that the new show would not just be an island-hopping presentation of dance and culture, but would have a story line — something the show had never had before. Presentations of the different island cultures would be woven into the story.
Moe said components were choreographed one at a time and plugged in to the "Horizons" show to test them. "We had these little confirmations," Moe said. You'd see people wiping tears, and we'd know we've got it."
More specialists were added to the mix: Ryan Woodward added the first-ever animation segments. Deward Timothy overhauled the sound system.
Three years and $3 million later, the PCC launched "Ha: Breath of Life" on Aug. 14. The featured character, Mana, is born during the early scenes in the show. The audience watches him grow through boyhood, fall in love, marry, develop respect and appreciation for his elders, mourn the death of his father and become a father himself. "We've worked to create an engaging experience that captivates audiences while it reinforces what they've learned about our Polynesian cultures through the telling of one man's life story," PCC President Von Orgill said.
Locals typically view the PCC as an attraction for tourists, and fewer tourists have come through the gates recently because of the depressed global economy. But curiosity about "Ha" has attracted people living near the PCC to the theater. "When the new show first opened, locals would come two or three times a week," said Magalei, who, like Moe, is a previous night show performer. "It was perfect timing. We're in a down economy and locals are coming to see the show."
Professional amateurs
Student performers who walk on, twirl or sit on fire get hazard pay; just about everyone else dancing or drumming in the show is making close to minimum wage. Some 80 to 100 of an overall cast of 120 are in the show each night, and student turnover because __IMAGE3__of graduations means 20 percent of the cast is trained new from scratch each semester. And yet the show, year over year, maintains stellar critical acclaim. "We couldn't have written the reviews better if we had written them ourselves," Magalei said of the press that followed the launch of "Ha" three months ago.
"We're the most professional amateur production there is," Moe said. A sign over one of the cavelike stage entrances reads: "Thru this tunnel pass the best dancers in Polynesia."
"I danced with that sign (overhead)," Moe said. Now she sends others out to dance the hula and the haka and more.
Many student performers come from the islands represented in the dancers; most have their first exposure to the dances at the PCC. The cast also accomplishes other faith-building objectives.
"It's not just the story line, it's how we work together," said Longoatu Vaka, a returned missionary who is studying hospitality and tourism at BYU-Hawaii. "A lot of us in the cast decided to help everybody think about their future. Now we see more of the cast going on missions, more temple marriages," including his own, just three weeks earlier.
A bulletin board backstage is crowded with photos of former cast members now serving missions: four since the new show opened in August, three more going before the end of the year.
Vaka plays Mana's father, opposite Lupi Fiefia, who plays Mana's mother. She is also a returned missionary, majoring in intercultural studies and social work. Her own temple marriage is scheduled for late November.
They are team leaders with an obligation to the rest of the cast. "If I'm sloppy, the boys around me would be doing it sloppy, too," Vaka says. Fiefia portrays great emotion as her character experiences the trevail of childbirth early in the show and the violent loss of her husband late in the show. "If I come to the theater and have bad feelings, I have to clean my inner vessel," she said. "If I don't I won't be able to feel the Spirit (while doing the show.) I have to make sure I'm not angry at someone. Satan always has something ready to throw at us."
E-mail: sfidel@desnews.com