Hawaiian Culture Propped High with Meaning: The Lei Hoaka in Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl's Emmalehua

Hawaiian Culture Propped High with Meaning The Lei Hoaka in Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl’s Emmalehua Stefani Overman-­ Tsai Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, a postcolonial playwright of Sa­ moan, Hawaiian, and Caucasian descent, unveils the challenges Hawaiian Ameri­ can women face in their construction of an identity that embraces their heritage, yet still allows comfortable social movement within the dominant U.S. culture present in Hawai’i. Three of Kneubuhl ’s published plays can easily be categorized as postcolonial. In Emmalehua Kneubuhl specifically traces complicated issues of Ameri­ can-­ iza­ tion prevalent in Hawai’i in the 1950s through the negotiation of a specific stage prop, a lei hoaka.1 Kneubuhl’s play is not simply a history lesson of Hawai’i’s past. Instead, the playwright weaves history with current struggles native Hawaiians experience with Ameri­ canization and the consequences of centuries of colonization. Using traditional and ancient practices, Kneubuhl traces the trials of the protagonist, Emma, and her family as they each struggle to encourage each other not to for­ get their heritage and give into Ameri­ canization. This essay will examine the playwright’s use of an ancient lei hoaka and how it highlights the complications for native Hawaiians in a postcolonial society. Many props are used to signify how characters are reacquainted with their Hawaiian heritage in Emmalehua. Many of those props will be discussed in this essay, but it is the lei hoaka that is particularly interesting in a consideration of how postcolonialism is addressed. In the first scene of the play Emma hears the call of Laka, the goddess of hula, after ignoring her grandmother and hula for several years. The call of Laka is transferred from her dreams to her consciousness and the audience by a Greek-­ like chorus and the lost lei hoaka that Emma finds in her closet. 84      S te f a n i O v e r ma n - ­ T sa i This specific lei hoaka, a crescent-­ shaped necklace adorned with human hair and a black boar’s tooth, once belonged to Emma’s grandmother and holds significant spiritual importance in its association with hula.2 Once it is brought out in the open, the lei hoaka becomes an active participant in developing the characters of two half-­ Hawaiian women in the play, Emma and her younger half-­ sister, Maelyn. The prop passes hands between the two women, revealing their personal views of their heritage , their passion for hula, and their relationship with each other. The development of Emma’s and Maelyn’s characters via the negotiation for the lei hoaka presents postcolonial issues of reviving lost cultural practices before they are forgotten or buried under the imperialistic changes that come with Ameri­ canization. Kneubuhl uses the lei hoaka as a metaphorical and physical example of Emma’s rich hula roots, a reminder of her spiritual strength and her responsibility to her family. As a prop, the lei hoaka is able to transcend function and becomes a significant cultural and postcolonial sign. The power of an object as a sign is what makes props in a play useful as storytelling devices, because a prop can have more visual power as a sign onstage than in ordinary life. In Great Reckonings in Little Rooms, Bert O. States asserts that objects become signs when they enter “illusionary space and time.”3 This notion of how objects become representations can lead us to consider objects onstage, such as props, as specific and purposeful plot mechanisms used by the playwright to reveal tidbits of information when language is simply not enough for the descriptive job at hand. Props take on characteristics and reveal important information that the playwright wishes the viewer to recognize. Andrew Sofer’s book The Stage Life of Props is a useful guide when considering a prop’s performative power because an object transcends function when it is placed onstage and “manipulated” by actors.4 How a prop is manipulated in performance may reveal socioeconomic messages, including cultural practices, identity construction, and the reintegration of heritage into one’s everyday life. The structure of the play Emmalehua also manipulates the lei hoaka and raises it above simple decoration. For outsiders to...