A birthday party 13 years ago has given birth to a dream for three Maui women, and they hope to celebrate with a gift of educational entertainment for local children.
Maui residents Geri Emata and Cyndi Mayo-Akea, along with Patty Silva, have been performing at children’s birthday parties and celebrations as The Peek-a-Bows. The trio of silly, funny characters — Lena, ‘Alani and Poni — dress in bright colors, with fluorescent hair to match, and live in a rainbow. They act out stories, sing songs and teach a few Hawaiian words for kids, giving little lessons about life along the way.
Now they’re hoping to turn their act into a live-action/animated show for young online viewers and perhaps even get it aired on TV. Toward that end, they’ve received funding from Maui County and Lokahi Pacific, a Maui community-development organization, and are seeking to raise additional funds through an Indiegogo campaign. They’re ultimate goal is $25,000, enough for three episodes of about 12 minutes each, with the target audience being keiki ages 2-6.
“Each episode will be us three Peek-A-Bows coming down from the rainbow,” Emata said. “We find out that the keiki have some kind of situation and they need help solving it. Each episode will have a lesson, and then we’ll interview experts that will tie in with the lessons.”
The trio got its start back in 2008 when a friend asked them to entertain at a baby luau. Emata and Mayo-Akea both were performers with ‘Ulalena, a popular theater-luau show based in Lahaina, while Silva was active in theater on Maui.
“We performed as ‘The Fairies’ and we sang the regular songs — ‘Happy Birthday,’ ‘Hokey Pokey’ — songs that the kids all knew and could dance to, and the kids just loved it,” Emata said. “So we ended up getting hired for other baby parties. … From that, we thought we could make it into a bigger thing.”
The group tried to get their show on local cable TV in 2010, getting so far as filming a pilot at then-Maui Community College, but the project got bogged down at the editing stage. Since then, Emata and Mayo-Akea both got jobs as flight attendants and had families, but the group recently started performing again. With the funds they’ve already received, they’ve put together an album of five songs and started to develop the concept for the video series.
While there is a vast amount of entertainment online and on air aimed at kids, Emata said they wanted their show to have a distinctly Hawaiian flavor. She compared it to “Checkers &Pogo,” the kids TV show that aired in Hawaii from 1967 to 1982, or “Dora the Explorer,” the popular series featuring a young adventurer, which has found appeal among kids.
For Hawaii’s young audiences, that meant emphasizing the cultural diversity of the islands, which is why the group calls itself the Peek-a-Bows — a reference to rainbows — and displays such a vivid color palette.
“It became the Peek-A-Bows when we came up with a storyline of who we are,” Emata said. “We had that idea of being accepting of all cultures, all colors and sizes.”
To download their newly released song “Slide,” learn more about their show or to contribute to their Indiegogo campaign, visit thepeekabows.com.
