What shapes the creative impulse? What gives form to the unruly rush of inspiration?

Countless contemporary storytellers point to the work of scholar Joseph Campbell. His books and lectures influenced George Lucas in writing Star Wars, gave structure to Disney movies and provided the bones to the Matrix series.

Campbell, in turn, was deeply influenced by his wife, Hawaii-born dancer Jean Erdman, whose remarkable career is being celebrated at the Hawaii State Library.

Campbell, whose most well-known works include “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” and a series of interviews on PBS titled “The Power of Myth,” died in 1987. Erdman celebrated her 100th birthday in February of this year.

Hawaii stage actor and director Will Hao was a member of Erdman’s theater company for years. This year, Hao was contacted by the Joseph Campbell Foundation to organize the Erdman exhibit in Hawaii. He was well-suited to the task. He knows stories about every playbill and poster on display — as when he pointed to a photograph on one of the flats and said casually, “And here’s Jean and Joe at an event with Maya Angelou and Edward Albee.”

Erdman’s mother was from the Dillingham family. Her father was a minister. She studied hula in her youth and modern dance at Punahou School. She finished high school at Miss Hall’s School for Girls in Massachusetts and went on to Sarah Lawrence College. Campbell, 12 years her senior, was her professor. He was teaching a philosophy class, and on the first day he asked his students why they were taking the course. “Jean said, ‘I want to learn about Pluto.’ Of course, she meant Plato,” Hao said. “Joe would tell that story and say, ‘I fell in love with her right there.’”

They were married for 49 years, happy to support each other’s artistic pursuits. Campbell encouraged Erdman, then a principal dancer for modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, to leave Graham’s company and establish her own path. Erdman would listen as Campbell read aloud all his first drafts. She would ask him to attend the final week of rehearsals for her shows and be her second set of eyes in fine-tuning the production.

In the early 1970s, Hao was a student of McKinley High School drama teacher Jim Nakamoto. After high school, he continued acting in local theater. In 1976, Erdman, who had by then choreographed the Tony Award-winning musical “Two Gentlemen of Verona” on Broadway, came to Honolulu to audition dancers and actors for a production of her piece “Gauguin in Tahiti.” Hao auditioned, was chosen and moved to New York. He stayed with Erdman’s company, Theater of the Open Eye, for 10 years until it closed, traveling for shows all over the country and around the world. Erdman’s work was lyrical, bold, rich with meaning. During the 1983-84 theater season, they performed for months at the Herod Atticus theater in Greece. His stories of that time could fill an evening, but he always comes back to his aloha for Jean.

“She was the most mellow director,” Hao said. “In New York, directors scream and throw things. I never heard Jean yell.”

Hao was an actor, not a dancer, but Erdman had a way of quietly studying people and choreographing them to make the best use of their natural movement.

“She would make you feel so special. She would say, ‘There’s only one of you in the world. You have to celebrate that,’ ” Hao said.

When they weren’t traveling the globe, Erdman and Campbell lived in a small apartment in New York City. In the 1980s, they bought a small apartment in Waikiki near the Dillingham Fountain where they could walk to the Outrigger Canoe Club for lunch and dinner. Hao, who had a long career in New York until moving back to Hawaii seven years ago, would visit Erdman and stay in her studio. “After Joe died, she had a hard time sleeping. All of us in the company took turns staying with her until she felt better,” Hao said.

The Joseph Campbell Foundation sent costume pieces from Erdman’s theater company along with a portfolio of clippings and photos to be used for the exhibit. Hao and two friends had to scan the images, have them enlarged and pasted on foam board then mounted onto flats. The library let them use an upstairs room to work.

“Staff from the library would come in on their lunch breaks and say, ‘I can give you 30 minutes. How can I help?’” Hao said.

A maintenance staffer from the library showed up for the reception with a watermelon he had carefully carved into the logo of The Theater of the Open Eye. Hao was thrilled. Erdman’s work was still bringing people together, still shaping the creative urge.

Erdman’s memory is clouded and she no longer recognizes Hao. At the opening reception for the exhibit, they brought her wheelchair close so she could look at the photographs and videos of herself dancing. Erdman asked, “Is that me?” Hao told her, “Jean, that’s your spirit.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.