Performance Coverage: Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl's THE CONVERSION OF KA'AHUMANU

Negotiating Contact

Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl’s The Conversion of Ka’ahumanu, November 13, 8pm
Cast: Felicity Jones, Elisabeth Waterston, Jacquelyn Pualani Johnson, Pili Nathaniel, Kim Rosen, Mel Gionson

By Tom Pearson

In her body of work, playwright Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl renders the power and complexity of women and speaks directly to the concerns of her Native heritage. Her play, The Conversion of Ka’ahumanu, which was read at The Public Theater on November 13, 2008, rendered the story of a well-known and highly controversial historical figure for the Hawaiian people, Queen Ka’ahumanu, a pivotal leader who brought about great assimilation between her traditional culture and Christianity during a period of early contact.

The reading, directed by Marie Clements, was stunningly beautiful. While leaving the theater, I overheard several audience members expressing their delight that the reading felt so much like a full production. Wearing simple white muumuus, the Native actors, Jacquelyn Pualani Johnson as Ka’ahumanu, Pili Nathaniel as Hannah, and Kim Rosen as Pali, split center stage among rocking chairs. Meanwhile, the two Westerners of the play, Felicity Jones as Sybil and Elisabeth Waterston as Lucy, book-ended the front of the stage behind music stands. At the very beginning, Mel Gionson, who read stage directions, walked to the front of the stage, turned his back to the audience, and wrote the name of the play on the floor in chalk. This simple act of rendering the queen’s name and the word “conversion” so pointedly, served as a reminder throughout the play of where we had come from and where we were going. As the lines between tradition and assimilation blurred within the trajectory of the performance, so did the chalky names underneath the bare feet of the actors.

The play itself charts the course of the Hawaiian people under the leadership of Ka’ahumanu, a powerful member of the ali'i, or chiefly class, whose rule spanned a period of time during early contact and gunboat diplomacy with the west, as well as an internal overthrow of the established religious taboos, and an incremental inclusion of Christian values and beliefs into the existing system. Motivated by a desire for equality and stability for her people, Ka’ahumanu, rendered with great compassion by Kneubuhl, is easily interpreted through a strong feminist lens. Her breaking of the taboos and her strength in confronting and questioning the missionaries tells a tale not often heard in history classes of the intelligence and diplomacy of the Native Hawaiian women during a time of great turmoil.

Throughout, Johnson’s portrayal of Ka’ahumanu was rich and multi-layered, informed by her study of chant and her use of the Native language, which was spoken in tandem with the English text in the script.

Ka’ahumanu’s incorporations of Christian values, which take place incrementally throughout the story, are shown as nuanced psychological negotiations which cause her to place value on what she witnesses in the missionary women: permission to teach writing, to talk about their god, to sit at the table with their husbands to eat. Yet, the discrepancies are not lost upon her, and she is well aware of the hypocrisies that allow the women to speak of their god, but not give religious counsel. In Act II, scene 7, she admits to Sybil that she sees the good in some of their ways but that her heart still holds back, remembering how the old gods ruled over her in ways she did not like, “So, when I saw a chance, I took them down.” She expresses her fears about how strongly the Christian god holds their hearts saying, “I would never be able to change the beliefs of the people once this god took hold.”

The play is itself a negotiation, seeking reconciliation with what is known of the actions of Ka’ahumanu and what can never be known of her internal struggle to do what was right for her people. In the final monologue of the play, she states, “To think too long on the ways of the past is to ignore the hungry sharks that swim among us.”

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The reading of The Conversion of Ka’ahumanu was followed by a post-performance discussion with playwrights Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, the reading’s director Marie Clements, playwright Diane Glancy and director Betsy Theobald Richards, and centered on the concerns of writing about early cultural contact.

Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl began by explaining the genesis of the play, her relationship to history, and the women writers that influenced her. Betsy Theobald Richards and the panelists then discussed history written not only from a woman’s perspective but also from the point of view of the colonized and the power in reclaiming those stories and giving them a more three-dimensional treatment. Read the full transcript of the discussion here.