Source: Maui Time, Maui News, Best of Maui, Maui Activities

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Voices from Okinawa
Friday (January 15)-Saturday (January 16), McCoy Studio Theater, MACC, Kahului, 7:30pm, $22

by Anuhea Yagi

January 14, 2010

SEEING VOICES - For four years, Peahi-born Jon Shirota wrote diligently to Lowney Turner Handy, trying to gain acceptance to The Handy Writers’ Colony in Marshall, Illinois. “When Lowney telegraphed him to come to Marshall in 1963, Shirota immediately quit his job of six and a half years and drove more than half way across the country,” writes Ray Elliott, president of the James Jones Literary Society. It was during his final year at Bringham Young University that Shirota read From Here to Eternity (authored by Jones, Lowney’s “most famous protégé”), and says of his subsequent inspiration, “I have a book in me that’s better than that.” In 1966, two years after Handy’s death (he was one of the last under her tutelage), Shirota penned Lucky Come Hawai’i, followed by Pineapple White in 1974—after which he began playwriting. His latest, Voices from Okinawa, was published as the summer 2009 edition of Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing (the University of Hawaii’s literary journal, currently celebrating it’s 20th anniversary). The East West Players debuted the play in Los Angeles in February 2008, while this weekend, Mauians can enjoy Kumu Kahua Theater’s staging, bringing Shirota’s work back home. 242-7469. -MauiTime, Anu Yagi