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From the second scene of Kâmau forward, the characters (and the audience) are confronted with a central question and the ensuing drama that will powerfully lead to the rapid unfolding of the play. The tourist company Alika works for, Aloha Tours, is expanding and Alika has been offered a promotion. Central to the company’s expansion is the fact that it has purchased a vast coastal area and plans to build a new tourist resort there; said area, however, includes the beach on which Alika’s family has been living for generations. The family will have to move and be relocated to a downtown condo.

Apio’s play provides an interesting point of entry into an exploration of the issues of land and community I evoked above. More specifically, I intend to follow the lead of two crucial concepts in Hawaiian culture, as reflected in Kâmau: the notion of ‘âina (land, earth) and the notion of ‘ohana (family, kin group). To some extent, the protagonist’s inner struggle, and the engine of the dramatic action, emerges primarily from a tragic conflict between a responsibility, a kuleana (which can be translated as both ‘responsibility’and ‘right’) towards the land and a kuleana towards the family. This conflict, I will argue, has to do with the impact of capitalism and colonialism on traditional Native Hawaiian culture–in which the notions of ‘âina and ‘ohana seem to be intricately connected to each other and overlapping. In my exploration of this cultural tension I will pay particular attention to the dynamics of gender and masculinity, primarily because this is a play that explicitly focuses on male subjectivity in the contemporary social context of Hawai ‘i, but also because tracing the …