Audience participation — asking the crowd to "put your hands together" or sing or whatever — usually seems like a playwright’s way of stretching the running time of the show or keeping kids from getting restless. And while this kind of involvement plays an important part in all Honolulu Theatre for Youth productions, in "Tasi’s Gift" it is a natural extension of the plot.

The story is about a Samoan girl’s involvement in the preparations for a traditional Samoan ceremony. Vaialofi Samifua (Tuala) stars as a good-hearted but easily distracted young girl who is asked by her grandfather, a master carver known as Tasi, to help him carve a bowl that will be used at the ceremonies welcoming a chief.

When a cast member asks "auntie" in the audience to help start the program, and "auntie" doesn’t know what to do, a quick lesson in Samoan culture is appropriate, and audience participation is in order.

The audience at Friday’s opening night performance didn’t have to be asked twice. Cast member Jordan Savusa quickly taught the crowd basic percussion techniques, and from that moment on, everybody was part of the aiga (family).

The show is beautiful work all the way around. Much of the performance space is covered in traditional Samoan mats. Director Eric Johnson makes imaginative use of puppets and projected shadow images to create the sense of being in a jungle and experiencing some of the magical things that can happen there.

Savusa (Rat) and HTY veteran Nina Buck (Bat) play several characters apiece; Savusa quickly becomes a comic favorite as an improbably large rat that is always being ordered around by a small but self-assertive fruit bat. Savusa and Buck have a second set of comic roles as a pair of would-be apprentice carvers, and return as a pair of haughty chiefs who doubt that Tasi will be able to complete a suitably ornate bowl in time for the ceremony.

Leo Liugalua (Tasi) completes the cast with a suitably dignified performance as Tuala’s patient and clever grandfather.

The story, written by Tamara Montgomery and adapted for the stage by Aito Simpson-Steele and Jamie Simpson-Steele, conveys several timeless lessons.

Bat learns why it’s best not to compete with other gift-givers and that giving a gift that represents yourself is preferable to giving something generic ("When you give a gift you are also giving a part of yourself"). Tuala learns to be responsible and finish difficult tasks. Her kindness to the rat, bat, starfish and centipede is repaid when the animals help her complete the bowl with patterns and markings never seen before in Samoa.

Samoan words and phrases are sprinkled throughout the dialogue, but the story and its presentation transcends ethnicity. And so, when the audience is called on to help out in the final scene, it seems natural to follow Savusa’s directions and participate.