I’m Lot Lane (a solo effort) (Photo courtesy: Christine Lamborn
KCACTF). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the national theatre program reviewed plays through submitted recordings, but upheld its recognition of productions in higher education that promote long-term societal impacts through an artistic lens.
UH Mānoa production,
I’m Lot Lane (a solo effort) interrogates the power dynamics in race, gender relations, and theatre while addressing the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and examining its aftermath in modern Hawaiʻi.
UH Mānoa theatre students created, directed, designed and performed in the production. Graduate student
Kealiʻikeola Simpson wrote and starred in the play alongside graduate students
A friend of one of Hawaiʻi’s most iconic and celebrated playwrights,
Edward Sakamoto, has gifted his entire catalog of plays to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Theatre and Dance, an extremely rare endowment. The gift gives
UH full ownership and copyright authority of the award-winning writer’s 19 plays which will help support theatrical productions in the department as well as around the world. Sakamoto, a
UH Mānoa alumnus, died in 2015. The Oʻahu native wrote highly-acclaimed plays in pidgin and specialized in nostalgic comedies and family dramas largely focused on local Japanese in Hawaiʻi.