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OUTLANDISH

WRITTEN BY Eric Anderson
November 6 – December 7, 2025

In 1873 the Victorian travel-writer Isabella Bird visits Hilo, Hawaiʻi. She throws herself into the local community with enthusiasm and occasional blunders. At the same time, the new King of Hawaiʻi, Lunalilo, coincidentally stops in Hilo on his inaugural tour through the Islands. Miss Isabella Bird and Lunalilo meet at a party given in his honor by the local sheriff and his wife. These two unusual people get to know each other in ways that challenge and surprise them both. This is a play about changes — give and take — occurring on a Hilo lanai but with reverberations that may echo throughout all of Hawaiʻi and the whole 19th century world — as well as within the warm confines of the human heart.

TWO NAILS, ONE LOVE

WRITTEN BY Lee A. Tonouchi
based on the novel by Alden M. Hayashi
January 22 – February 22, 2026

Ethan Taniguchi is a recently single gay man living in New York City when his estranged mother from Hawai‘i pays an unexpected visit, forcing him to confront their complicated relationship. “Anxious Ethan” is the Pidgin-speaking voice of self-doubt that haunts Ethan as he and his mother unravel painful family history: her incarceration during World War II and subsequent deportation to Japan as part of a little-known hostage exchange in which the United States traded its own citizens for whiter Americans held abroad. Will Ethan finally be able to understand the woman who is his mother, and will she be able to understand him in return?

LOIS-ANN YAMANAKA’S BLU’S HANGING

Adapted for the stage by R. Zamora Linmark
MARCH 26 – APRIL 26, 2026

A Hansen’s Disease survivor begins to lose his grip on reality as he mourns the death of his wife, while struggling to provide for his three children in an environment of economic dearth, educational lack, and sexual predation. The eldest child, Ivah, is offered a lifeline when a compassionate teacher helps her apply to a private boarding school. Learning that she has been accepted, Ivah must decide whether staying, or leaving, will best allow her to care for her father and siblings.