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SMOTHER

WRITTEN BY SARA WARD
August 28 – September 28, 2025

Marcia is a fiercely devoted but meddlesome mother who goes to extreme lengths to control her daughter’s love life, determined to steer her away from bad relationships and into the arms of the “perfect” partner. Julia, a sweet but independent young woman with a history of poor choices in men, struggles to establish boundaries as Marcia hatches a series of increasingly outrageous schemes to “fix” Julia‘s love life — culminating in a boyfriend’s disastrous allergy attack. As tensions rise and their bond fractures, Marcia is forced to confront her own fears and learn to let go, to avoid losing her daughter entirely.

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 lānaʻi 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
November 6 – December 7, 2025

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?