Artists & Communities Host Site: The Maui Arts & Cultural Center
1 Cameron Way
Kuhului, HI 96732
Web site: www.mauiarts.org/

Millennium Artist:
Lane Nishikawa
Playwright
California

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Writer and actor Lane Nishikawa has built a national following in attempting to reconcile the many contradictions inherent in his identity as an Asian American. His one-man shows have used a range of characters and biting humor to lampoon Asian American stereotypes; his dramatic plays round out the picture with characters representing shared rather than culturally-specific experiences.

Nishikawa extended this exploration through his Artists & Communities residency with the Maui Arts and Cultural Center in Kahului, Hawaii, where he went intending to develop a new play based on his family's immigration from Japan to Hawaii in the early 1900's.

Nishikawa had established good networks within the Japanese American community through previous work on Maui. His three-month partnership with the Cultural Center and with the Maui Community College enabled him to conduct workshop sessions emphasizing storytelling through playwriting, present his two monologues, "I'm on a Mission From Buddha" and "Mifune and Me," and begin work with the Nisei Veterans' Memorial, whose membership represents all of the Association of Japanese-Americans organizations on the island.

This relationship helped facilitate the in-depth interviews with members of the Japanese-American community that comprised Lane's research for his new play. As Nishikawa's work progressed, it became apparent that the eventual play would be a trilogy examining the impact of immigration to the island and the resultant relationship between the introduced and indigenous Hawaiian cultures.

A staged reading of Part I of "When We Were One" - depicting early immigration to Hawaiian sugar plantations by Japanese laborers - was presented at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center in December 2000. Actors were recruited from all sectors of the community: students, radio personalities, local politicians, artists, and those who had read about the project in the newspaper and just wanted to give acting a try.

While researching the dynamics of Hawaii's unique cultural mix, Nishikawa was also introduced to the Friends of Moku'ula, an organization dedicated to educating people about the islands' culture and history from a native Hawaiian perspective. To date, the Friends have focused efforts on excavating and preserving the historic home of Hawaiian King Kamehameha. Employing storytelling and interview techniques, Lane helped organization members begin to lay the framework for a performance piece presenting Hawaii's indigenous culture through theater, dance, and music.

As a result of Nishikawa's residency, the Maui Arts and Cultural Center received approval of an Arts Partners grant from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. This support will enable Nishikawa to complete Parts II and III of "When We Were One," mount a full production of Parts I and II on Maui in 2001 / 2002, and to develop a production of indigenous Hawaiian work in collaboration with Friends of Moku'ula.

Excerpt from "When We Were One," Act I Scene I

My name is Mariko Melia K.C. Kobayashi. I was born on the island of Maui. My father has two brothers. His father, my grandfather, had two wives. And this is their story…..My grandfather, Toshiro Nobuyuki Kobayashi, came from Japan in 1905. He was the third son and knew he would have to venture on his own, so he left Hiroshima for the 'Land of Opportunity' …. Nobody told him he would live 7 men to a room and that the sun would bake his skin and the rain would chill his bones. Nobody told him the sugar cane was taller than the sky and that centipedes would sting and the red dirt would fill his lungs when the winds whipped through the fields. Nobody told him.

MILLENNIUM ARTIST BIO

Lane Nishikawa is a writer, actor, director, dramaturg, and theater / film / television producer whose work examining the Asian American experience has been nationally broadcast through PBS Television, and presented by Stanford University Lively Arts, Los Angeles' Japanese American Theater, the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., Philadelphia's Annenberg Festival, and Scottsdale's Center for the Arts, among many others. His work has also been published in Time to Greez: Incantations From the Third World, Ayumi: The Japanese American Anthology, and Bridge Magazine.