(Dramatic music) Behold the sea!

(Instrumental music) Narrator:  Today, Spectrum will look at several Hawaiian creations in architecture and in theater, the Hawaii Performing Arts Company will show us how they approach a very unusual play.

Co-directors Dwight Martin and Howie Seago come from two different worlds, the hearing and the deaf.

Together, they speak the common language of theater as they work together to produce the Hawaiʻi premiere of Mark Madoff's award winning play Children of a Lesser God.

But first, we'll learn what brand of uniquely Hawaiian architecture originated in our old plantation towns.

We'll see examples of houses that were built as a response to the demands of early Hawaiʻi.

(Instrumental music) Some people think Native Hawaiian architecture began and ended with a thatched hut, but that isn't so.

We are about to see another example of what the experts call a vernacular architecture, one created and adapted by our people to meet the needs of a particular time, an architecture that is suited to our unique climate and geography.

Look around you, drive through any residential area, and you will see numerous dwellings in the familiar island or plantation style - houses enclosed by a single wall of one by six vertical boards with a brace running across the middle and a raised floor covered around the outside with latticework.

Approximately 1/3 of all Hawaii's houses are variations of this basic theme.

What is single log construction and how is it relevant to the Hawaiian experience?

To find out, we must begin at the source, the same source that has done so much to shape Hawaii's development and her people, sugar.

Less than a mile from the mill stack at Waipahu stands one of the last of the early plantation home sites.

It was here and in the other old sugar towns that single wall housing had its origins.

Around the turn of the century, more and more contract laborers began arriving from the Orient to work the cane.

Housing them all soon became a growing problem.

What was needed was a structure that could be built cheaply and quickly, while making the most efficient use of available building materials.

At first, different materials were used indiscriminately.

Lumber was scarce and expensive, as it had to be shipped from the Pacific Northwest.

At the same time, many Japanese, newly arrived, began building houses for themselves on the plantations.

Their carpenters brought with them considerable skill in woodworking and building techniques.

Undeterred by lumber scarcity, they simply improvised making a little bit of wood go a long way.

Architect Ray Morris comments on these early houses.

Ray Morris: I have a great admiration for the Japanese carpenter, and he, of course, was hired by the plantation.

And his job was to build houses for the the laborers and the plantations is well known, are quite strong on keeping down the cost.

They don't like to spend any money, and the houses were designed from this aspect of cost.

Narrator: By the 1900s single wall housing began to spread across the Hawaiian landscape.

Whole towns sprang up: ʻEwa, ʻAiea, Kahuku, Waimanalo.

Most of the Japanese, Chinese and Filipino workers chose to stay once the terms of their contract were met.

They married, raised families and lived the rural Hawaiian ways that are now mostly memories.

(Instrumental music) This house was built in the 1920s.

The girt, a horizontal strip of wood so distinctive of a single wall house, has been internalized.

Another feature of these early houses was their exposed plumbing, which often formed an elaborate sculpture of pipes and fixtures.

This early outdoor plumbing was possible for the same reason that the single wall idea worked so well in Hawaiʻi, a mild year round climate with no prolonged periods of adverse weather and no freezing pipes in January either.

The advantages of single wall construction were not lost to private commercial builders, and soon the style was copied and approved upon by local architects and contractors.

Lewers and Cooke was one of the companies that began building single wall houses on a large scale.

Ray Morris joined Lewers and Cooke as an architect in 1926.

Ray Morris: Typical T and G house is aboard three quarter inch thick, and it stands in a wall like this, between eight and nine feet tall, and you take a long stretch of that, say, 12 feet of these single board houses, the joint is a T and G joint.

There's a tongue that goes into a groove.

That's what they call it, tongue and groove, T and G, and that's the joint between them, and it runs up all the way up through the board that is made here.

So it to make it look good.

The T and G wall was built because it was the cheapest thing that could possibly be done.

And structurally, the support was in the same member as the finish of the inside.

They're easy to handle.

The structural pieces of a house require only one man to handle them.

Usually the T and G house was built between three and five men working, the whole job took three months.

Narrator: In the peak years, it even took less time.

Typically, three carpenters were put to work on one house.

From empty lot to finished product took five days, and in those days before unions, the carpenters were also electricians, painters and plumbers.

Ray Morris: I went around to the different offices here.

There were about eight architectural offices now.

There's about 200 now, but of the eight, I got a job in each one.

I got 15 jobs the first week I was here.

I got a refusal from Lewis and cook, so I went back to them and told them just what I'd done.

I said, I will draw plans for small houses here.

It looks to me as though we need small houses.

We got plenty of architects to build the expensive one, but what's needed here is a house for the man that can't afford it.

And I would like you to help that man out.

You want to sell your building materials so you're vitally interested.

And I said, I will draw the plans.

You will pay me a salary out of the profit on the lumber, and you will help him all your can.

So they took up the idea.

And of course, the other problem is money, and they worked it out, so with the banks, so that they would take the second mortgage.

And it worked.And we built thousands of houses.

You see those houses there?

I built every fifth house up there.

Thousands of houses I built, turning them out 12 a week.

And it worked.

The whole thing worked.

And the man that thought he never could have his own home had a home.

Narrator: In time the basic single wall style was refined and added to.

Houses began to lose the pure plantation look.

The straight, rectangular floor plan gave way to more sophisticated variations.

Although new single wall construction has witnessed a decline over the years, the style has by no means gone out of style.

Many local architects are rediscovering the form and applying it in new and imaginative ways.

Architect Jim Reinhardt takes us through this three story Oʻahu home.

Jim Reinhardt: This house is designed by Steve Au in 1970 it's an adaptation of the single wall the traditional single wall house.

It uses the standard single wall materials, the T and G redwood siding, the corrugated metal roof, but in this case, it has a separate structural frame.

Because of the steep hillside lot, this is a three story high house, and the, the telephone pole and large beam structure becomes the structural element support, supporting the house.

The, the redwood siding keeps out the weather and provides the enclosure.

The structural frame becomes a decorative part of the, of the house, very much a design element.

The house is, however, very much of a Hawaiian house in other, in other ways, in that the garden, the trees, the landscape, the lanai, become part of the living space.

The ventilation, the use of the windows allow the house to be very open while still providing the sort of enclosure that one needs to protect furniture and belongings.

This house has a corrugated metal roof, which is one of the traditional elements of the single wall house, the plantation house.

It's used for a number of reasons.

One, it's a good roof.

It lasts very well.

They there are metal roofs in use which have been for 30, 40, years.

It's also, it reflects the sun quite well.

It has good structural strength.

But in this particular case, the house, because it's part of the traditional vocabulary of the single wall house, that was very instrumental in the selection of that roof for this as being part of the single wall palette.

Here you can see the thickness of the single wall siding that's basically one inch thick forms the enclosure for the house, and you can see the tongue and groove nature of it here.

Narrator: Climate, geography, sugar and a little bit of ingenuity contributed to the single wall solution a vernacular architecture and a real Hawaiian natural.

Ray Morris: What I accomplished was to put people into homes, which is the thing that I like best to do.

With the help of Lewers and Cooke, we put people into homes that I don't think would have been.

Would have had a home of their own if they hadn't, if Lewers and Cooke hadn't helped us out, I was part of that, and I was very glad to be it, because that's the one thing I want to do, is see people in homes.

Narrator: The single wall house has a style that continues to influence us.

The theater also has a style, one that reflects our lives.

The Tony Award winning play Children of a Lesser God displays the drama in the life of a deaf woman and her speech teacher.

Let's join co-directors Dwight Martin and Howie Seago to see how this unusual play is directed and acted.

Dwight Martin: The title of the play comes from a quote from Idylls of the King by Tennyson, and the quote reads, "For why is all around us here, as if some lesser God had made the world but had not the force to shape it as he would."

The plot of Children of a Lesser God essentially involves a hearing man who is a teacher at a school for the deaf and a deaf woman who has gone through that program at the school and is still remaining there at the school.

It's a relationship that develops between these two people, in which the hearing man, the teacher, is trying to get Sarah to learn to speak, to have vocal skills, and Sarah is very stubbornly resisting that, and refuses to learn.

The relationship evolves from student and teacher into a personal relationship.

They fall in love, they get married, and they realize that the two worlds that they each represent, the teacher with the hearing world and Sarah with her deaf world, that there's not a lot of compatibility.

There are too many differences for those worlds to coexist.

Children, Children of a Lesser God really is a hearing play, and by that, I mean that the playwright is a hearing person.

It was written for a hearing audience and was not intended to to singly, be a vehicle for deafness.

I think that that element is incidental to the way in which the play was constructed and its purpose, which was to be written for the commercial theater.

We are going one step beyond that here in Hawaiʻi with our HPAC production, and we've discussed this with the playwright, so he is aware of that, that because we're trying to include members of our deaf community here in Honolulu in our theater, that doing this play will open up many opportunities for them on stage, as well as off stage, in all facets of the production to be included.

And that's something that I'm not aware has really happened, even in professional productions on the mainland before.

It's very interesting, because there are many parallels in those two worlds into the backstage elements of our production.

We have hearing people as well as deaf people in the cast, and decided that in order really to be true to form, to fully develop and understand what those two worlds represented, that we would really be recreating that situation ourselves and our own working environment.

And for this reason, we decided to have two directors, have co-directors, one hearing and one deaf, so that we could be true to form and be certain that we develop the values correctly and accurately.

Howie Seago (voice of translator): My suggestion to this production is that naturally, I'm a deaf person.

I grew up in a deaf world with a hearing family.

I have had all of the communication difficulties that are in this play, the frustrations trying to communicate with the hearing world, and my speech is not able to be understood.

Being in a world of silent knowing this, I can bring this experience, this live experience, to the drama.

And also I know how to get out of the, get it out of the actors themselves.

They may not be sure of how to present it, but I know how to do the thing.

I can pull it out of them, and also help the hearing people to accurately portray their roles from my own live experience.

Dwight Martin: Having co-directors on any production can be an invaluable asset, and it also can be a handicap.

It's an asset in that first, essentially, Howie and I are looking for different things in the play, meaning that, as the hearing co-director, I'm listening to voices, I'm I'm looking at staging as I would in any regular play.

And Howie's input as a deaf co-director is focusing on sign language skills, physical expressiveness, and being certain that we develop values which are true and accurate to the deaf world.

In one sense, I think the process will go faster because we have two different people overseeing the production.

We have two sets of eyes, two brains.

But in other regards, it goes a little bit slower, because when you have two people at the helm, it's, it's paramount that we be together in all the decisions that we discuss fully, whatever information or direction we want to give to the cast, so that there is consistency.

And that necessitates that we meet many hours on our own outside of rehearsal to discuss through whatever we'll be doing in rehearsal that particular evening.

Let's try that tonight.

Okay In order to produce Children of a Lesser God, we found it necessary to extend the rehearsal period.

Generally, we will rehearse a play for six weeks.

But in the case of Children, we decided to add an extra month, an extra four weeks out in this is because our first task has been to do a sign language translation of a script which was an actual line by line, word by word, translation in which Howie chooses the appropriate signs for the appropriate spoken words.

We have a sign language tutor who is there to assist our actors who have not had previous experience in sign language.

We have a sign language prompter to give out the signs, just as a stage manager would give out a line if an actor forgets it in rehearsal, and figured we needed an additional month to accomplish these other tasks.

Howie Seago (voice of translator): Okay, first of all, we'll work on what we call script translation.

That's where we take a lot of time in reading the lines and making sure that we know exactly what the proper meanings are, then we'll choose the correct signs to fit with the correct meaning, and we'll go through that.

And it takes time.

Normally, in other plays, we just have to read through it, and that's all.

But here, we have to take a lot of time to pick the correct signs, and it's very time consuming.

We have to write it all down.

Also, we have to explain the meaning, because most of the deaf actors are really not that skilled in understanding the English language itself, so we have to really make sure they understand the meanings.

Did you get that?

(Laughter) Okay.

Are you writing these down?

Dwight Martin: The sign we're choosing weak for helpless?

No, I'm saying you should write it in the book so that you can remember it when you go home and study it.

Write down on... Howie Seago: Write down weak weak Translator: Write down weak.

Then when you then when you review it at home, you okay, you have it there In any way...

In any way, sign the whole sentence now.

Actor: The speech is claimed, it's okay, but it's basically what hearing people always says, we, we do not..consider Ourselves... Actor:  ourselves helpless in any way.

Okay, write down what you forgot.

Howie Seago (voice of translator): Write down the things that you forgot.

Alan Fulner: Do I sign this or just speak?

Howie Seago (voice of translator): I think you would sign this.

Think maybe...it think Sarah is reading the paper so she's not watching.

Dwight Martin: Except it's possible that while she's reading, she's really keeping her eye on this activity over here, and kind of watching it, but not not standing there and obviously being a part of it.

If he noticed that, he probably would sign it.

Alan Fulner: Am I going to notice that?

Dwight Martin:  The playwright has stipulated that in any professional productions of this play, that the deaf role of Sarah be cast with a deaf person, and that the hard of hearing roles be cast with hard of hearing actors.

Although HPAC is not a professional theater, we are an amateur theater, we made a conscious decision to try and stay true to that form as well, and to comb through the community and find people who would be suitable actors in the play, who would be deaf or hard of hearing.

And we did that because we felt that there are qualities that we could develop in the play itself, in our own production that would be much more accurate by using the kinds of people that were intended to be used.

It adds another element to our rehearsals.

Of course, it makes it more difficult to communicate between hearing people and non hearing people, but we really felt that we wanted to do it as as closely as the playwright intended as we possibly could in Hawaii.

We're very lucky because of the three roles, one deaf and too hard of hearing, we've been true to form on two of the three.

We do have a deaf actress playing the lead of Sarah.

We do have a hard of hearing gentleman playing one of the student roles, Oren, and we have found it necessary to use a hearing person for the second hard of hearing role.

It's very interesting because in the rehearsal, the actors are facing the same problems relating to one another like the characters do on stage.

Meaning, because we have hearing people, some of whom do not have any sign language skill at this point, and deaf people.

In order for the actor, playing James to communicate with the actress playing Sarah behind the stage, it's the same kind of situation as the two characters relating to one another on stage.

They have two different languages, and they need to find some kind of a common language.

For the rehearsals themselves, we do have an interpreter, a sign language interpreter, who bridges that gap, but we are being very selective in how that interpreter is being used, because we want the actors to have a similar real experience, real life experience, to what their characters are having on stage.

Alan Fulner: Actually, the signs, of course, are the are the biggest difficulty, because relating to a non hearing person I was very concerned about, and working with Wanda as a deaf person I was also worried about, and getting the signs and learning to communicate has been the biggest challenge as an actor.

Wanda Petersen (voice of translator): Relationships with deaf people are very simple, but relating with hearing actors is a new experience for me.

It's a new experience for me in in not only with the acting, I have to depend a lot of my ability to lip read, and there's a lot of responsibility that goes on with that.

Knowing when to say my line.

It's quite an experience.

Dwight Martin: Right, right up to them, and just tell them be brave about it.

Howie Seago (voice of translator): We'd like to see standing back there, more opportunities for deaf actors to be involved in regular plays that may not have anything to do with deafness at all.

For example, Elephant Man.

Why not use a deaf person who might have some speaking abilities to play that lead role in Elephant Man?

They could act the deformed role, and it could be really perfect.

I'd like to see more hearing directors looking for alternatives, to see where we could use deaf actors in those plays.

What I would hope that the impact of the play would have on the audience would be that they would leave the play with the understanding that they're really, that we're all really basically the same.

We all have the same human needs, we have the same human feelings, the same desires, the same goals in life, and that we all have really the same kind of heart, that we want to be accepted, that we don't want to be made over in somebody else's image, just as what Sarah says in the play.

Narrator:  The theater probes a more uncertain realm, the realm of our feelings.

If, as some say, the theater is a mirror of life, then we go to it with a question in our minds, what will I see today?

We'll be looking for you on our next Spectrum.

(Instrumental music)