Historic figures come to life at Oahu’s oldest graveyard

Every June, Hawaii’s history comes to life among the headstones at Oahu Cemetery. Founded in 1844, Oahu Cemetery is Hawaii’s oldest public cemetery, the final resting place for many Honolulu notables and the setting of Cemetery Pupu Theatre.

“Actors portray influential people from the 19th and early 20th centuries,” said Mike Smola, curator of public programs for Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives, which plans and produces CPT in partnership with Oahu Cemetery. “The audience gets a clear sense of who those people were because the actors’ 20-minute monologues contain excerpts from their letters, speeches, articles and diaries.”

According to Smola, the perception that cemeteries are eerie places was not widespread in the 19th century. In fact, back then it was common for people to gather there to relax, chat, enjoy picnics and take photos near the graves of family members.

Tom Woods, Hawaiian Mission Houses’ former executive director, introduced the concept of “dinner theater in a cemetery” based on a similar program that was offered at Old World Wisconsin (oldworldwisconsin.wisconsinhistory.org) when he was the executive director there.

Hawaiian Mission Houses launched CPT in 2011. Programs revolve around a central theme and comprise five one-person plays at different locations in the cemetery — often beside the grave of the historical figure being portrayed.

“CPT is unique in that it is live theater in a cemetery, but it is not a ghost tour,” Smola said. “It has a sound basis rooted in extensive research about real people and events. We wrap up the program with a 30-minute discussion with the researcher, scriptwriter, director, actors, costume designer and others involved with organizing it.”

Topics have included medicine and public health issues; life at sea and on the Honolulu waterfront; and authors, playwrights and composers. This year’s theme, “Yesterday’s News,” examines the roles of newspapers in Hawaii some 100 to 200 years ago.

“The significance of newspapers increased as more and more Hawaiians became literate in the mid-1800s,” Smola said. “Newspapers were used to educate the populace about Christianity, to record Hawaiian history and culture, and to debate politics and encourage activism. The people spotlighted in ‘Yesterday’s News’ all made an impact in this regard.”

The Rev. Lorrin Andrews (1795-1868) published Ka Lama Hawai‘i (The Hawaiian Torch), the first newspaper in the Hawaiian kingdom. Written entirely in the Hawaiian language, the four-page weekly made its debut on Feb. 14, 1834. It was printed at Lahainaluna Seminary on Maui (now Lahai­naluna High School), where Andrews served as the first headmaster.

One of the students who contributed to Ka Lama Hawai‘i was Samuel Kamakau (1815-1876). He helped assemble material for the Rev. Sheldon Dibble’s seminal “A History of the Sandwich Islands,” published in 1843, and went on to contribute many historical and cultural articles to Hawaiian-language newspapers in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Some of those accounts were organized into three books — “Ka Po‘e Kahiko” (“The People of Old”), “Na Hana a ka Po‘e Kahiko” (“The Works of the People of Old”) and “Na Mo‘olelo a ka Po‘e Kahiko” (“Tales and Traditions of the People of Old”).

John Papa Ii (1800-1870) was an adviser to Kamehameha II, Kamehameha III, Kamehameha IV and Kamehameha V. Like Kamakau, he used the medium of newspapers to share legends, genealogies and traditions and cultural practices that he feared would otherwise be lost. The two historians, however, did not always agree and had no qualms about airing critiques of each other’s work via newspaper stories and letters to the editor. A number of Ii’s writings were compiled for the book “Fragments of Hawaiian History.”

A Honolulu lawyer, Joseph Poepoe (1853-1913), was the editor of several Hawaiian- language newspapers, including Ku‘oko‘a Home Rula (Independent Home Rule) and Ka Na‘i Aupuni (The Conquerors of the Nation). Interestingly, he was arrested for participating in the 1889 rebellion against the Bayonet Constitution, which reduced the power of the Hawaiian monarchy, but in 1897 he publicly stated his support for annexing the islands to the United States.

Emma Aima Nawahi (1854-1934) and husband Joseph were loyal to the Hawaiian kingdom, a position that was reflected in Ke Aloha ‘Aina (The Hawaiian Patriot), the newspaper they founded in 1895. When Joseph died the following year, Nawahi took up the mantle and continued to promote pro-royalist and anti-annexation activities in the paper until she sold it in 1910.

All in all, it makes for a memorable evening.

“Cemetery Pupu Theatre is an opportunity to ‘meet’ people from Hawaii’s past that you would normally learn about only through books, films, reports or articles,” Smola said. “It combines great food, conversation and theater in an unconventional, parklike setting, showing how their vision, views and accomplishments helped shape the Hawaii we know today.”

Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based freelance writer whose travel features for the Star-Advertiser have won several Society of American Travel Writers awards.