Bollyhood

How do we top this?

That was the question actor/playwright Alvin Chan was pondering this time last year when Hono­lulu Theatre for Youth opened its 2013-2014 season with his big cross-cultural musical, "A Korean Cinderella."

Chan’s colorful mash-up of a familiar European-American fairy tale and contemporary K-pop music was such a hit with HTY audiences that everyone was expecting him to come up with something equally impressive this year.

The answer is … "A Bollywood Robin Hood."

Chan’s new cross-cultural show puts the familiar English characters — Robin Hood, Maid Marion, Little John and the Sheriff of Nottingham — in the colorful setting of an Indian "Bollywood" musical.

The term Bollywood was coined many decades ago when Mumbai, the center of the Indian film industry, was known as Bombay. Bollywood stories typically involve action and comedy, star-crossed lovers, conniving villains, honorable heroic leading men and lots and lots of singing and choreographed dancing.

Chan looked at Bollywood with some of his production team and liked what he saw.

"A lot of times the Indian filmmakers take Western stories and remake them Bollywood style and just put in a lot of dancing and a lot of songs," Chan said. "I found a (Bollywood) version of ‘The Prince and the Pauper,’ but when I talked with (HTY Artistic Director) Eric (Johnson), we decided to make it a more epic story."

Robin Hood was a natural. Not only is Robin Hood one of the best-known historical figures in American pop culture, but "outlaws" have also been seen as romantic or heroic figures in India.

"The (original) Robin Hood story is set in a real time during the Crusades, and so I looked for an actual part in Indian history to transplant the story. I started researching Indian history, and I found a period during the Mughal Empire, which fit perfectly. I found a real king from that era, Akbar the Great, and transplanted all the Robin Hood characters into that era of Indian history. Everything is built around that."

HTY company actor Junior Tesoro stars as Robin. Director Chan joins Lavour Addison, Maile Holck and Brittni Shambaugh in playing the other characters.

"The king is off trying to conquer more lands and unite India, and while the king is doing that, his No. 1 man, the Wazir of Agra, is wrongfully taxing the people in order to gain more money for himself. Robin tries to fight the Wazir and gets banished."

Chan wanted the show to be told from an outsider’s perspective of Indian culture, as seen through the lens of Bollywood filmmakers.

"We got lots of cultural advice. Our costume designer for this show, Cheri Vasek, is a costume teacher at UH, and she’s visited India many times. There was a big Bollywood exhibit at the UH recently, and she was in charge of all that. She’s got lots of contacts in India. We also brought in a Hindi teacher (to help with pronunciation), and we’ve been studying Indian dance."

"We’re not making assumptions about anything," he says. "It’s going to be a really big show, and we want everything to be as correct as we can get it."

A free study guide with suggestions for story-related activities is available at www.htyweb.org.