Playbuilders Mission:
PlayBuilders gathers and shares Hawaiʻi’s stories through community-based theatre, honoring lived experiences and helping build stronger relationships among Hawaiʻi’s culturally rich and diverse communities.
We partner with communities throughout Hawaiʻi to gather personal stories through outreach, story circles, and one-on-one interviews. With the permission and participation of the people who share them, these stories are developed into original plays that celebrate culture, illuminate lived experience, and invite audiences to see one another with greater understanding.
PlayBuilders produces and stages these plays, casting community members alongside experienced actors. This gives people connected to the stories an opportunity to participate in bringing them to the stage and in telling stories drawn from their own lives, cultures, and shared experiences.
PlayBuilders gathers and shares Hawaiʻi’s stories through community-based theatre, honoring lived experiences and helping build stronger relationships among Hawaiʻi’s culturally rich and diverse communities.
We partner with communities throughout Hawaiʻi to gather personal stories through outreach, story circles, and one-on-one interviews. With the permission and participation of the people who share them, these stories are developed into original plays that celebrate culture, illuminate lived experience, and invite audiences to see one another with greater understanding.
PlayBuilders produces and stages these plays, casting community members alongside experienced actors. This gives people connected to the stories an opportunity to participate in bringing them to the stage and in telling stories drawn from their own lives, cultures, and shared experiences.
Our Okinawa Ohana:
Stories from our Uchinanchu community
by Lee Tonouchi
( based on shared stories collected by
PlayBuilders of HawaiʻI Theater Company)
Community auditions in Mid July!
Our Okinawan ʻOhana Project Overview
Our Okinawan ʻOhana is a community-based theatre project created by PlayBuilders of Hawaiʻi Theater Company in collaboration with the Hawaiʻi United Okinawa Association, the Jikoen Hongwanji, and the Maui Okinawa Kenjinkai. The project honors and shares the personal stories of Hawaiʻi’s Okinawan community.
From November 2024 to the present, stories have been collected through community story circles led by Terri Madden, with assistance from Diane Aoki, Deanna Espinas, William Hao, Emily Jorgenson, Jonathan Masaki, and Karen C. Oshiro. During these story circles, community members shared memories of family, immigration, plantation life, food, language, cultural traditions, humor, and resilience. In addition the team interviewed over 40 individuals. The stories were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Playwright Lee A. Tonouchi, Hawaiʻi’s Poet Laureate, then transformed these stories into the play he titled Our Okinawan ʻOhana: Stories from Hawaiʻi’s Okinawan Community.
The project celebrates intergenerational storytelling, cultural preservation, and community connection. On January 15, Reiko Ho and Sean-Joseph Takeo Kahāokalani Choo staged a community reading at Jikoen Honwanji. Since that reading, Lee has continued revising the play based on feedback from community members who attended. These revisions are helping prepare the work for its upcoming full production, directed by Reiko Ho, which will bring together experienced actors and community members to share these stories onstage, including participants who will help tell their own lived experiences. Performances will take place at the Okinawan Ballroom on September 27 and at Windward Community College on October 17 and 18.
Our Okinawan ʻOhana creates space for Okinawan families and the wider community to remember, reflect, laugh, and celebrate together.
About Lee A. Tonouchi
Lee A. Tonouchi is the current Hawaiʻi Poet Laureate, serving a three-year term from February 2026 to January 2029. Widely known as “Da Pidgin Guerrilla,” he is a prominent author, playwright, and educator who advocates for the use of Hawaiʻi Creole English, or Pidgin, in literature.
Happy Grant News! We were just notified by the Atherton Family Foundation that they are providing a $10,000 grant for Our Okinawan Ohana! Atherton Family Foundation has helped us in the past on several of our projects over the years, and we are so very grateful for their support!
Our Okinawan ʻOhana is a community-based theatre project created by PlayBuilders of Hawaiʻi Theater Company in collaboration with the Hawaiʻi United Okinawa Association, the Jikoen Hongwanji, and the Maui Okinawa Kenjinkai. The project honors and shares the personal stories of Hawaiʻi’s Okinawan community.
From November 2024 to the present, stories have been collected through community story circles led by Terri Madden, with assistance from Diane Aoki, Deanna Espinas, William Hao, Emily Jorgenson, Jonathan Masaki, and Karen C. Oshiro. During these story circles, community members shared memories of family, immigration, plantation life, food, language, cultural traditions, humor, and resilience. In addition the team interviewed over 40 individuals. The stories were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Playwright Lee A. Tonouchi, Hawaiʻi’s Poet Laureate, then transformed these stories into the play he titled Our Okinawan ʻOhana: Stories from Hawaiʻi’s Okinawan Community.
The project celebrates intergenerational storytelling, cultural preservation, and community connection. On January 15, Reiko Ho and Sean-Joseph Takeo Kahāokalani Choo staged a community reading at Jikoen Honwanji. Since that reading, Lee has continued revising the play based on feedback from community members who attended. These revisions are helping prepare the work for its upcoming full production, directed by Reiko Ho, which will bring together experienced actors and community members to share these stories onstage, including participants who will help tell their own lived experiences. Performances will take place at the Okinawan Ballroom on September 27 and at Windward Community College on October 17 and 18.
Our Okinawan ʻOhana creates space for Okinawan families and the wider community to remember, reflect, laugh, and celebrate together.
About Lee A. Tonouchi
Lee A. Tonouchi is the current Hawaiʻi Poet Laureate, serving a three-year term from February 2026 to January 2029. Widely known as “Da Pidgin Guerrilla,” he is a prominent author, playwright, and educator who advocates for the use of Hawaiʻi Creole English, or Pidgin, in literature.
Happy Grant News! We were just notified by the Atherton Family Foundation that they are providing a $10,000 grant for Our Okinawan Ohana! Atherton Family Foundation has helped us in the past on several of our projects over the years, and we are so very grateful for their support!
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On January 15, 2025, PlayBuilders of Hawaiʻi Theater Company presented the first draft of Lee Tonouchi’s community-based play, Our Okinawan ʻOhana: Stories from Our Uchinanchu Community, as a staged reading at Jikoen Hongwanji. Directed by Reiko Ho, and Sean Joseph Choo, the reading featured many of Hawaiʻi’s most celebrated actors bringing the community’s stories to life.
The evening was warm, joyful, and deeply meaningful. Before the reading began, the reading, participants, artists, and audience members gathered for a potluck feast that included special Okinawan food bentos from Gyotaku Japanese Restaurant. After the reading, PlayBuilders received audience feedback by email, which Lee is now using to revise the script. His revisions are also being informed by additional stories collected from Maui. To date, PlayBuilders has conducted story circles in Honolulu and Maui and approximately 50 personal interviews with members of Hawaiʻi’s Uchinanchu community. These stories continue to shape the play, ensuring that it reflects the voices, memories, humor, struggles, and cultural pride of the community it represents. |
Photos from our story circles
From November 2024 to the present, stories have been collected through community story circles led by Terri Madden, with assistance from Diane Aoki, Deanna Espinas, William Haʻo, Emily Jorgenson, Jonathan Misaki, Karen C. Oshiro, and Wendy Tamashiro. Community members shared memories of family, immigration, plantation life, food, language, cultural traditions, humor, and resilience. The project team also interviewed more than
40 individuals. These stories were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and transformed by playwright Lee A. Tonouchi into a new play celebrating Okinawan life in Hawaiʻi.
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Hawaii United Okinawan Association
We held 3 story circles here and began to get to know each other 
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Young Okinawans -
One story Circle held at Jikoen Hongwanji- So Fun!
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Paaranku ladies Story circle
at Breene Harimoto Community Park n Pearl City
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One of the most interesting story circles we held was with the Paaranku Ladies. The Okinawan men of Hawaii did not have time to learn this dance and so the ladies picked up the tradition and kept it going.
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