Opening its 68th season this month, the Honolulu Theatre for Youth (HTY) announced the World Premiere of its newest show “The Pa’akai We Bring.”
According to HTY’s website, the show aims to introduce young audiences to the Native Hawaiian connection to pa’akai (salt).
Native Hawaiians often use sea salt to season or preserve food. According to Sea Earth Atmosphere, it is also used for ceremonial purposes and in medical practices. Native Hawaiians collected it from rocky shoreline pools or manmade shallow clay ponds where the water had evaporated leaving behind only salt.
“The play follows multiple generations of salt farmers on Kauai, mixing in ancient stories, hula, live music, original songs and plenty of audiences participation into a tasty potluck of performance, joyously served up with aloha,” HTY’s website said.
Before creating “The Pa’akai We Bring,” the show’s creator and HTY Artistic Associate Moses Goods led the HTY creative team to Kauai where they worked beside and learned from traditional salt harvesters.
“In Hawaiʻi we have a special relationship with paʻakai,” Goods said to Broadway World. “We live our lives surrounded by salt water, we use salt to cleanse and purify and we value salt as a treasured gift. Salt traditions are unique to every culture and we’d like to share a bit of ours with your family.”
The show debuts to Hawai’i audiences on September 23rd at 7:00 p.m. at Tenney Theatre. Two more shows will follow on September 25th at 2:00 p.m. and October 1st at 4:00 p.m. A wider tour begins May 2023, according to HTY’s website.
Tickets may be purchased online at www.htyweb.org
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