(waves crashing) Narrator: Today on Spectrum, we visit with a theatrical set  designer who talks about creativity, we join a rehearsal and performance of the Hawaii Ecumenical  Chorale as they prepare for a Bach Festival.

But first, we join Mary Pritchard and discover  what forms tapa may take in the Samoan culture.

Tapa is an art form made from trees, nuts and  roots.

These enduring materials have provided Polynesian cultures with a fabric that has  been stretched, beaten, rubbed, painted, worn, mounted and given as a medium of exchange.

Once common to all of Polynesia, until recently, this ancestral tradition of bark cloth art has  only been maintained in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.

(music) Narrator: It was through Samoan influence that tapa making  was revived in Hawaiʻi.

As one of the oldest art forms in the Samoan culture, examples of  their tapa called siapo were present at a Samoan festival in Honolulu.

Here, music, dance  and culture were brought from across the miles.

(drums beating) Narrator: Several citizens of American Samoa arrived to  display their region's art and crafts.

Samoans living in Hawaiʻi were present to  share in a day reminiscent of their origins.

(Samoan dance performance) Narrator: Also present was Samoa's leading lady in  the art of tapa making, Mary Pritchard.

Mary Pritchard: Most people think that the word tapa is Samoan, or rather  the name for the article, but it is not.

Siapo is the Samoan word.

Tapa, as I have  learned, it is more or less a marquesan word.

Narrator: The bark cloth of siapo comes from the paper of  mulberry plant.

But supply is scarce.

Mary Pritchard: There's not enough people to do their bark, their cloth now.

It's only over in Western Samoa in Savaiʻi, where the bark is being prepared, and  that's why I go to buy all my materials.

Narrator: This material consists of the inner bark or bast of the tree,  which is processed and beaten into a cloth.

The oldest method of decoration is called  siapo tasina.

Using a design tablet of carved wood soaked in brown stain, the bark  cloth is stretched upon it and rubbed until the design has soaked through.

Bark cloth  tears easily along its length.

Therefore, it is wrapped upon the tablet, both lengthwise and  width wise, for bonded strength.

Young bark cloth has two sides.

The smooth side goes on the bottom,  directly touching the stain and the carving.

Mary Pritchard: You always have to look for the right and the wrong side.

The right side is smooth and the other side has fuzz, but when it gets too  old, then it's fuzzy on both sides.

Narrator: Red clay is grated over the cloth and  rubbed in to further highlight the design of the natural brown dye.

This dye, also made  from tree bark, gives siapo a rare longevity.

Mary Pritchard: I have pieces that I am not, you know, anthropologist or someone that you  know dissect with the microscopes you know to look into the fiber or the material.

But I  have pieces that I feel that, oh, they're well, way, way over 100 years old, maybe 200 years  old, who knows.

And it still shows the dye, especially the brown dye, which is our most  important one for tapa making.

It's still shiny.

Narrator: Arrowroot starch, a natural adhesive, is used to cement together  layers of cloth, as well as to patch holes.

Mary Pritchard: My first one that I attempted of, you know, when I said, I'm going to make me a tapa, a  siapo.

So, I go and I put it on, you know, and I used the starch, so I worked, but I had to use  a ruler and a pencil, you know, measure everything out just right.

Followed it.

So, I said, Oh,  nice.

I started to peel it off.

I couldn't, I couldn't do it.

And I said, oh my gosh.

Finally,  I had to, you know, it was torn off.

And called me valea stupid.

I said, yeah, but you didn't tell  me that.

See, because when they come start coming in to do their work together in this house,  you see their boards are already covered.

I never saw one being covered.

And I didn't think  of asking, well, how do you put it on the board?

Narrator: Freehand siapo art is very satisfying to one's design instincts.

Called siapo mamanu, it allows  dyes to be painted directly onto the bark cloth.

Mary Pritchard: The colorful siapo of today, the idea was born out of the ladies looking up at the beautiful stained-glass windows and the  circles and the squares and the divisions.

Narrator: Within the broad division lines inspired by stained glass windows, early Samoan siapo makers experimented  with patterns derived from trocus shells, points of the pandanus bloom and the pandanus  leaves, as well as the leaf from the breadfruit tree.

Within a single panel, a design may go  through gradual steps of elaborate complexity.

Mary Pritchard learned the finer points of this  art from the old and experienced Samoan villagers.

Mary Pritchard: Those were my companions, you know, were the old people.

I didn't  go around with young people because I was asking questions.

I was interested  in many things, trees, the ocean, fish.

And that's how I learn, and that's how  I get to meet up all these people that come to study things in Samoa.

With the present crowd  I'm not I'm a loner, but I get more company.

Narrator: When company comes to visit Mary Pritchard at her home in Pago Pago, they might find her  hard at work on a piece of siapo, such as this one composed as a legacy for her grandchildren.

This siapo was her gift to the governor of American Samoa.

But Mary Pritchard worries that  Samoan interest in native siapo is lagging.

Mary Pritchard: To be honest, that is the one part that I am very sad about, because in my own heart, I really  believe my people, perhaps there might be a few, but as far as up to now, I see no interest.

As  far as American Samoa is concerned, there's none.

They're not making it.

We're the only ones.

Not  even the preparation of the bark, nothing, no one.

Narrator: But many foreign students have come from afar to learn the art of siapo from Mary Pritchard,  nearly all of whom receive what she teaches.

Mary Pritchard: I had one failure.

This lady came up, you know, they wanted, she wanted to learn how to  do the tapa all right.

The only thing she did was to be able to cover her boards.

Then comes time  to start designing.

She comes out with the others, and everybody's busy, and I keep watching.

She was a lady about early 50s or middle 50s.

And when it's time for all of them to  go home, she didn't even put a dot.

And then they come back again, you know.

And  she comes and again, she goes home.

No, no.

I said, what's the matter?

Just draw, when  are you going to begin?

She just, she said, oh, I don't want, no, you're not going to ruin it.

If you ruin it, we'll recover it.

No problem there.

Then I go about, you know, they go home.

She didn't do any work.

And I felt myself just, you know, but I didn't say anything to her.

And  I said dammit, what's a matter with this woman?

And she ended up, she didn't come up again,  but she sent me a check for $15 and she didn't even put a dot in the paper.

I  said, take this.

I used another word.

I don't want to say it.

I said take this  back to her and say, thank you very much.

This is the first time I've had a failure in  anybody, not even scratching the board.

So that was I've seen kids while I'm talking before  I know, hey, wait a minute.

Kids, so there you go.

Narrator: The artistic quickness of children is a treat for Mary Pritchard,  particularly when she sees it in her own family.

Mary Pritchard: This is my great grandson's.

He designed all he did all the black in one evening, and then  he let it go.

And I think I said, when I say, I said, when are you going to color your board?

Bucky?

I'll do it now.

I said, okay, sit up and he did it that evening.

One can do a siapo in two or  three hours of the first lesson anyone can do it.

(natural sound) Richard Mason: It's the most wonderful kind of vocation, because so much of it is like avocation.

So much  of it is simply fun, doing things, puttering, improvising, playing, and that's really what  theater is about.

It is, plays after all.

Narrator: In his 22 years as the resident scene designer for the  University of Hawaiʻi drama department, Richard Mason, abhors the routine,  the repetitive and the cliched.

Richard Mason: I've always found, found it fascinating to investigate, not to  be satisfied with with just a sort of humdrum, routined rut, but to move outward to sightsee on  your own, to go off into the byways and alleys, off the side, off the main drag,  to see what you can discover.

Narrator: The very nature of theater demands curiosity, creativity and flexibility.

Richard Mason: A theater is, to a great extent, a sort  of collection of one-shot possibilities.

You don't do the same thing every time you  work on shows in a career in the theater.

Narrator: The scene designer creates the environment in which a play is presented.

The  designer uses a language of colors, textures, materials, shapes and lines to set the mood,  even to establish a metaphor for the production.

(natural sound) Narrator: Using the model of the 1983 production of Romeo and Juliet, Mason describes the design elements  employed to create a metaphor of conflict.

Richard Mason: Terry Knapp, who directed it, wanted large spaces for people to rush in,  to fight, to dance.

The big ballroom scene took up practically the whole stage, and you  have a lot of strong, long diagonals that make a lot of activity possible.

And of course, the  activity is a metaphor for the kind of feelings, the rebelliousness of the society and  of the characters in the, in the play.

Narrator: As a professor of drama, Mason has taught his students not only the craft of scene  design, but the concept of the creative process.

Richard Mason: What is this?

My black box for Alice in Wonderland.

Richard Mason: This is Alice in Wonderland?

Since Alice is in 20 scenes total.

20 different  sets.

It's all basically vignettes.

So, it seats in this configuration about 800.

In the  round it will seat 1,000 seats on this set.

And there's a duplicate section over here.

These  vomitoriums are closed off.

And this is the ground level, so the rest is all below, so people  would come in, so it isn't really that large, it's just mostly underground, and  the superstructure will be built in.

Richard Mason: I think I've had educated my students in standards of presentation,  in ways of thinking about design, in well, in elements of creativity.

I have always stressed  the need for curiosity, to investigate everything, to ask questions, to look at everything, to keep  files, to develop a library, to use the library, to stimulate you into thinking, into  discoveries, out of the cliches.

I left in one heart.

Richard Mason: You know, so there's a there's a checkerboard rug or something like that there.

Or  the green the grass is done in squares of sod or line.

So I think you have to get the your  students, the people who who are listening to you, to become enthusiastic about doing something  once experimenting and perhaps taking on wood the techniques that they've learned, but not  simply repeating the procedure, repeating the format, repeating the forms that they've  created, that each time you do something so that it will be a new experience for you, and  it will be a new experience for the audience.

Narrator: His office in the drama department has been an example of the  wealth of Mason's own imagination.

Among the hundreds of books and assorted theatrical  paraphernalia, is a most unusual wall.

Richard Mason: Many years ago, I don't know, 30, 35, years ago, when I was  first interested in design, I started to I found some of these wires.

Some of them are  champagne corks and some are package ties, and some are coils of wires that have become  unglued.

All of them have been shaped by nature, by accident, by events, by cars rolling over  them, by weather and so on.

The idea is to present something provocative to the students  who come into the office and they ask, well, what are these things?

I've never seen any of them  they say.

Where do you get them?

What do you how do you make them?

And they're always surprised  to find out that they are accidental.

They are ubiquitous.

You can find them out in the parking  lot.

You can find them at construction sites.

The point is for them to look for them,  and to see them and to respond to them.

Narrator: In the 22 years that he has lived and worked in Honolulu, Richard Mason has  designed more than 100 productions for theater, ballet and opera companies here and on the  mainland.

He is now retired.

His last production for the UH Kennedy Theater was, Right You Are,  If You Think You Are, by Luigi Pirandello.

Richard Mason: It's more or less my valedictory.

It's not quite a realistic  interior.

We want to suggest that the theatricality and the ambiguousness of  the theatrical world.

Is it real?

Is it not real?

When is it real?

And so, we've made,  I've made a set that is basically transparent.

Narrator: Mason has left behind a legacy of students and productions, but he takes with him to  his new home in New York, his love for the stage.

Richard Mason: I think the theater will always play a part in my life, certainly vicariously.

That is to say, going to see productions.

And I think from time to time, as a as a still,  as a continuing designer, that we shall see.

Narrator: The Hawaii Ecumenical Chorale,  now in its fifth season, gathers together at Saint Theresa's  church to rehearse their performance for a celebration commemorating the 300th  birthday of composer Johan Sebastian Bach.

Its volunteer members are drawn from the  local community.

Its stated purpose is to assemble a group of singers who wish to learn  and present choral music of a more challenging caliber than the average choir affords.

One  of the directors of the Hawaii Ecumenical Chorale is Eileen Lum.

She personally  auditions every member of her choir.

Eileen Lum: But a lot of I find that lot of our Hawaiian people, Hawaiian meaning ethnic, and  Hawaiian meaning those of us who live in Hawaiʻi, have very good ears.

So, once they hear a melody,  they've got it, which is very exciting to me.

(singing) Narrator: Of a broad musical background, Eileen Lum first discovered the  appeal of song in her childhood home.

Eileen Lum: There was always singing in the family and  on pitch, which I'm so lucky.

My father whistled.

My mother sang just very simply and  always on pitch, and I'm so grateful for that.

Narrator: During a musical retreat in Berkshire, Massachusetts, she  discovered the conducting abilities of Dr.

Richard Westenburg.

She invited him  to Hawaiʻi to guest conduct her choir.

Eileen Lum: But I was so impressed that he never got angry.

When I  joined the choir, I said, I think to myself, you studied.

I'm thinking inside and I'm biting  my tongue.

I've had so many bloody tongues.

He never got angry.

He explained so clearly,  I said, oh, what am I doing with my choirs.

Richard Westenburg: Yawn like a giant ski monster.

Harp on some little helpless piece  of music?

So don't really make a lot.

Some conductors like to beat up on singers, you  know.

That's the that's their stock in trade.

They they feel that if they have tantrums and if  they are mean and nasty and point fingers and say, you didn't that is, that is what they do.

I am  just not constituted that way as a person.

So, I'm not saying that I try to mollify everybody.

It's  that I don't try, unquote, to do anything except be myself and be as demanding as I can be.

And  with a choir like this one can be quite demanding.

(singing) Richard Westenburg: Wherever you go within any of the 50 states,  or any of the countries of Europe or the orient you people singing is the most natural  thing that that there is to do musically.

(singing) Richard Westenburg: Someone said that every instrument makes some nod to imitating the human voice when  it is designed.

If, if you listen to a violin teacher or a flute teacher or a piano teacher  or anything telling their students how to play, and they have a melody, you will hear them say,  play in a singing way.

Cantabile is an Italian word, which means in a singing way, but it's  a, it's used for instrumental music as well.

Narrator: Dr.

Westenburg especially wishes to clear up erroneous  notions of the conductor's role.

Richard Westenburg: Many people think that the job of the conductor is to  keep time.

That's fair to say.

So, anybody that may be listening who thinks that can  divest themselves of that thought immediately.

What a conductor really has to do, first and  foremost is, is have and convey a concept of the music that is strong and as I always  say to the choir and to the orchestra, leaves no doubt as to, what are the high points?

What are the expressive possibilities, the peaks, the valleys, the loud places, the soft, the  fast, the slow, and so forth.

And have an understanding, which brings these things into a  relationship that then will add up to something.

(instrumental music) Richard Westenburg: You do in time with music what a painter or sculptor  does in space with his or her art.

Narrator: The evening of the performance is devoted to the music of  Bach.

Leonard Bernstein once remarked that once you have learned to love the music of Bach,  you will love Bach more than any other composer.

Eileen Lum: Oh, I love Bach.

When I was small, I used to wonder, why wasn't  he declared the eighth wonder of the world?

Narrator: Dr.

Westenburg believes that Bach's Magnificat in D  major presents a challenge to any choir.

Richard Westenburg: Oh yes.

Although you know something, it's not so challenging for the listener.

It's  very direct.

It's not unlike Handel's Messiah.

(music)