A new play premiering Wednesday night at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa combines Hawaiian language, English and Pidgin.
Ikaika Mendez is the playwright of “Lele Wale,” and Waileia Tupou plays Lele, the main character. The pair spoke with HPR about the play and their connection to its story of a community’s resilience following the Lahaina wildfires.
Mendez, who grew up performing in Lahaina as a Hawaiian musician and entertainer, studied theater at UH Mānoa. He said his personal connection to West Maui and his love for Hawaiian music and hula inspired him to produce “Lele Wale” as his thesis.
“I had all these different legends and stories that I could have told, but just one day it came to my heart to tell the story about Lahaina and what had happened,” Mendez said.
The Hawaiian language and music traditions incorporated into the play are what drew Tupou to audition and ultimately land her the lead actress role.
“They incorporated a lot of Hawaiʻi into the roles, into the mele and oli that are presented in the play, and as a student in the Hawaiian Language Department, I wanted to highlight the ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, and that kind of pushed me to just go for it,” Tupou said.
The show’s themes of grief, hope and rebuilding all ring true — especially for the Maui residents whose true stories from the wildfire form the play’s basis.
“These stories are all real. They’re all real civilians and residents of Lahaina who just wanted to tell their stories,” Mendez explained. “And I feel like this play was a great medium for them to release that and to let it out."
Mendez hopes that the play can offer hope and a meaningful catharsis to those who contributed to its creation and to the Hawaiian community as a whole.
The play’s title, he explained, encapsulates this desire: “It's a term that finishes our ancient traditional chants or prayers, and the full phrase is ‘ʻĀmama, ua noa, lele wale.’ And at the end of the prayer, you say that to say my prayer is finished, the kapu, or the taboo, is free, and let my prayer now ascend to the heavens. And just within that one short phrase, that's what I want the audience to take away, is that this is a prayer for us as individuals, as well as a community, on how we deal with grief, how we deal with loss, trauma, colonization, displacement, all these different themes that pop up.”
“Lele Wale” premieres on March 4 at the Earle Ernst Lab Theatre at UH Mānoa. The run is sold out, but same-day waitlist tickets may be available. More show and ticketing information can be found here.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 4, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
