By Yiming Fu, Report for America corps member
“If a car was coming right at you, would you react like that?” Tina Kailiponi yells as her students recreate a scene in rehearsal. She’s asking them to heighten their emotions, sharpening their tone of voice, body language and facial expressions. And the students, aged 12-17, drill each scene about ten times over, trying to nail down the right inflections to bring the show to life.
Kailiponi is directing Snow Angel, a play about a mysterious girl named Eva who steps out of a snowbank in a Vermont blizzard and 15 confused teenagers who are asked to help her in her search. The students rehearse from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. five days a week. And the whole experience is free to participate in, courtesy of Wave of Harmony Foundation.
Barry Kawakami, the founder of the Wave of Harmony Foundation, started the idea last July, hoping to reduce barriers to a theater education by sponsoring free tickets to shows, free performance arts bootcamps and creating resource hubs for performing arts productions on Maui. After the Lahaina fires devastated the island, he hopes the performing arts can be a tool and outlet for the next generation to heal. He said he took it into “overdrive,” after the fires, including sponsoring free tickets for everyone to see Maui Prep High School’s “Beauty and the Beast” show.
“It came about as a passion and a promise, Kawakami said, “my passion for the arts and the theater and the importance of it and the fun I have with it. But also a promise to my family and the friends I made along the way that introduced me to the theater, that took me out to an opera in Los Angeles.”
When Kawakami was 9, he joined a feeder program at the high school that recruited kids with promise in the performing arts to work with high school students. When auditioning for the musical Oliver! the director Sue Ann Loudon called him aside to perform Where is Love and gave Kawakami his first solo. He continued to perform through middle school and high school.
“If it wasn’t for the arts when I was 9-years-old, I wouldn’t be sitting here today with the great life I have and will continue to have.
Barry Kawakami (center) poses with Maui OnStage director Tina Kailiponi (right). Kawakami helps sponsor productions such as Maui OnStage’s “Snow Angel.” 
The students rehearse five days a week for three hours a day. 
Kawakami observes a Thursday “Snow Angel” rehearsal. Photo by Yiming Fu 
The students take in feedback on projection, enunciation and bringing the characters to life. Photo by Yiming Fu 
Kailiponi helps the students drill different scenes, drawing them out of their shells and getting them to understand why a character may be feeling a certain way. Photo by Yiming Fu 
These life lessons, including communication, collaboration and self-expression are all lessons Kawakami hopes to bring to Maui’s youth by sponsoring free show tickets and boot camps. Photo by Yiming Fu 
Kawakami’s organization fills an important gap in Maui’s theater scene. Kailiponi said it finally gives Maui creatives a centralized place where people putting on productions can apply for funding. Photo by Yiming Fu 
After the Lahaina fires, Kawakami hopes the performing arts can unlock a collective healing for everyone on the island. Photo by Yiming Fu
Tina Kailiponi has worked in the performing arts in Maui since 1994, doing everything from directing to designing to theater education. In the 90’s Kailiponi said there was a flurry of funds, central funds and state funds for anyone who wanted to be involved in the arts. There was an abundance of performing arts programs for at-risk youth in particular. But in the 2000’s, that funding started to evaporate, Kailiponi said, with schools and communities cutting arts.
Maui’s theater scene has since become dependent on finding donors and private sponsorships. Wave of Harmony, Kailiponi said, finally gives Maui creatives a centralized place where people putting on productions can apply for funding.
Even if kids don’t go into theater, the performing arts teaches lessons in collaboration, communication and perseverance, Kawakami believes. And being on stage was the first time he heard people cheer for him. It taught him that the arts are powerful because they can move people.
He hopes all Maui kids can have that same access to the theater.
“It took a shy local boy from Iao Valley that knew nothing about the arts, but now opened my mind up to the world. I want to make sure every kid has that opportunity to experience that and to think bigger.”
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