4 Thursday, April 6, 2017 Island Beat Hawaii Tribune-Herald Theater group presents ‘Alchemy of Aloha’ By JOHN BURNETT Hawaii Tribune-Herald When “Alchemy of Aloha: A New Play Showcase” takes the stage at 7 p.m. Friday night at East Hawaii Cultural Center, it represents a voice for people marginalized by society as well as a homecoming for a Hilo-born artist. St. Joseph alum Brandon Estrella is artistic producer for the Seattle based nonprofit theater group The New Alchemists. He’s also set designer and builder for the production, which is a pair of short performance pieces. The first is an adaptation of the children’s book “Fuzzy Land” written by Jennifer Poblano, made possible through Full Life Hawaii, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people with developmental disabilities lead happy, productive and self-directive lives. The second, which will follow a brief intermission, is “FriENDship,” an original script by Zoi Nakamura dealing with adolescent LGBTQ identity, which has since been expanded to “living aloha.” The actors are Waiakea High School students. Estrella, a structural engineer in Seattle who’s set to enter a Masters in Fine Arts program at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., said he’s thrilled to be home and doing “fringe theater” — a type of theater experimental in style or subject matter — in Hilo. “Hilo is very limited for the projects and things that I want to do, so it’s been an amazing opportunity to partner with East Hawaii Cultural Center and Full Life and Waiakea and bring the kind of theater I love doing and we love doing back to the Hilo community to share with them and to create theater with these organizations,” Estrella said. The theater presentation is part of Hilo Downtown Improvement Association’s First Friday and is also sponsored in part by the County of Hawaii. Admission is free, but donations are welcome, with half going to The New Alchemists and half to Full Life Hawaii. Estrella’s creative partners in this pursuit are artistic director Lily Raabe and composer pianist Ahmed Alabaca. Both are in Hawaii for the first time and are struck by the warmth of the people they’ve met here. “People just meet you here and give you a hug. That’s not how it is in Seattle,” Raabe said. Raabe and Estrella will also be among the actors in “Fuzzy Land.” It’s about being in a space where the world is not making sense at all and everything moves so fast that it becomes fuzzy. In the book, Fuzzy Land was Poblano’s place of refuge. “We’ll be doing a talk-back with the author and her direct care worker to talk with the audience about the process of authoring the piece and we’ll talk with the participants and the overall panel about the process of adapting and revising from the book that was written by Jennifer,” Raabe said. Raabe said the expansion of “FriENDship” was brought about by Hawaiian students in Marie Ellsworth’s class at Waiakea. “They’ve talked to us about the history of this land. The history of colonization, the history of Hawaiian peoples losing their lands and what that looks like. And also this influx of different folks,” she said. “If you have homophobia, that’s actually not very aloha. Living aloha is having peace and compassion for all peoples and how we are to each other and how we are as a land. So I think the piece that they’re starting to sculpt now will have some of the LGBTQ (identity), it will have some of the native Hawaiian heritage conversation. It will have many conversations that ‘living aloha’ envelop and what that means to all people and all belief systems and structures.” “It’ll be a devised theater performance, meaning you’ll see snippets, you’ll see physical theater, you’ll see monologue, you’ll see some scenes. There actually will be a moment of singing at the very end. It’ll have a lot of different elements that’ll combine together under this thematic element of ‘living aloha’ and what that means to this particular group.” “The students are creating all their own language and all their own monologue and scene work, and we’re the vessels to help them create that entire piece,” Estrella added. Alabaca said the music is not the focus of the play but is another element to set the mood. “Without the music in film, the film has lost a lot of its power. It’s the same in theater,” he explained. “We’re not doing musicals, so, for me, it’s like scoring a film. But it’s live and it’s exciting. … Music is something you can feel, because you feel the vibrations when you sing. You feel it in your soul; you feel it in your body. And it also adds another emotional element to the performance. When somebody is talking about something that is sad, playing not just minor chords, but something that’s kind of sweet can heighten that emotion. “The type of work we do is very intimate, so to have an intimate audience will make this even more effective. Because everyone can see it, everyone can hear it, everyone can feel it.” Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribuneherald. com. JOHN BURNETT/Tribune-Herald The New Alchemists, from left: Brandon Estrella, artistic producer; Lily Raabe, artistic director; and Ahmed Alabaca, music director; present “Alchemy of Aloha” featuring two short original “fringe theater” works, 7 p.m. Friday at East Hawaii Cultural Center.
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