Alani Apio wasn’t thinking “trilogy” when he began writing a play about things he saw Hawaiians experiencing in the early 1990s. Apio was in his early 20s and said he wanted to share what he was feeling in his “gut.” He titled his play “Kamau” (“to carry on”).

“Kamau” was the story of three young Hawaiian men who lived in an old house near the ocean. Alika Kea­loha, who had inherited the house from his parents, worked as a tour guide to support his cousins Michael and George Mahekona, who went fishing when they felt like it. Things changed for the worse when the company Alika worked for decided to build a resort on their land. The resort would mean a better job for Alika and give him more money to support his cousins, but at what cost to the family, which also included George’s pregnant girlfriend?

“Kamau” established Apio as an island playwright to watch when it premiered at Kumu Kahua Theatre in 1994. With the passing of time, and more life experiences, Apio was inspired a write a sequel, “Kamau A‘e” (“to carry forward”), which Kumu Kahua premiered in 1997. It was more than a decade after that before Apio saw how the characters could resolve their conflicts. “Ua Pau (It Is Finished, Over, Destroyed)” had its world premiere at Kumu Kahua in 2019.

Kumu Kahua is now revisiting Apio’s work with “Kamau Trilogy.” “Kamau” is performed on Thursdays, “Kamau A’e” on Fridays and “Ua Pau” on Saturdays. The three plays will be performed in order on Sundays.

“I think the sense of what I wanted to say with the trilogy has been said,” Apio said recently at Kumu Kahua. “But we’re workshopping all three again because this is the first time they’ve ever been presented (together), and we’re finding some interesting things that happen when you present all three together that are separate and different from if you just produce one at a time.”

Kumu Kahua Artistic Director Harry Wong III, director of all previous Kumu Kahua stagings of Apio’s work, says he too is enjoying the creative opportunities that come with directing the three plays together.

“There’s an incident that happens in the first play,” Wong explained carefully, not wanting to reveal any spoilers. “We were working on how that echoes in the other plays, so because you’re gonna get to see all three (plays), you’re gonna get to see how that (incident) echoes in each one of the other plays. Figuring out how an audience who has already seen what’s going to happen is seeing how the effect (of the incident) changes in each play, and how each of the characters reacts to it.”

“They wouldn’t have to be reminded in the second or the third play about what happened (previously), but they can see how the first play affected each of the characters in each of the other plays.”

Revisiting the three plays as a unified production, with some actors performing in two plays, and Joshua “Baba” Tavares performing in all three, has given Aipo new insights into how his work can be shared as live theater.

“It has been deeply exhilarating in the sense of, like, ‘Oh, brah! I never thought about that!’”Apio said. “How the voices and pain and joy echo across essentially three generations — or, if you consider what both of the boys talk about in the context of their grandparents, across four generations. How things about our lives echo across the generations.”

“When we put the three (plays) together, we are still literally finding, ‘Oh, that’s a nice echo point. We didn’t see that happening.’ Like we had this voice echoing in the first play from the third play makes sense in the totality (in 2024), but we couldn’t see it 30 years ago. That’s been exciting.”

‘KAMAU TRILOGY’

>> Where: Kumu Kahua Theatre, 46 Merchant St.

>> What/When: “Kamau,” 7 p.m. Thursday and June 13, 20, 27 “Kamau A‘e,” 7 p.m. Friday and June 14, 21, 28 “Ua Pau,” 7 p.m. Saturday and June 15, 22, 29 “Kamau Trilogy,” 1 p.m. Sunday and June 16, 23, 30

>> Cost: $25 for the individual plays (discounts available), $75 on Sundays (call the box office for a special discount)

>> Info: kumukahua.org or 808-536-4441