A UH Mānoa hana keaka inspired by Lahaina’s wildfire recovery is returning to Maui for four performances this Friday and Saturday, just as the community approaches three years since the disaster. “Lele Wale” will be staged at the Haleakalā Ballroom inside The Westin Maui Resort & Spa, bringing a production shaped by Maui voices back to the island at the moment its story is most present.
According to University of Hawaiʻi System News, performances are scheduled for 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday. General admission is $35, with the Maui run presented in partnership with Festivals of Aloha and supported by Hawaiian Airlines and the Wave of Harmony Foundation.
Written and directed by Maui native Ikaika Mendez, the work blends hula, Hawaiian theatre, live music and storytelling in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, Hawaiʻi Creole English and English. The UH Theatre & Dance department describes the production as a meditation on rebuilding, identity, displacement and the enduring bond between people and place.
A Play Built Around Memory, Not Spectacle
Mendez developed “Lele Wale” after growing up performing in and around Lahaina, and the production draws from lived experiences in the community rather than attempting to recreate the fire itself. In an interview with Hawaiʻi Public Radio, he said the stories came from real Lahaina residents who wanted a way to express what they had experienced.
“These stories are all real,” Mendez told Hawaiʻi Public Radio, describing the play as a medium for people to release grief and trauma. Its stated goal is less a theatrical replay of the 2023 catastrophe than a shared space for reflection, healing and the possibility of joy after loss.
A Homecoming Timed To Lahaina’s Third Anniversary
The Maui performances arrive on the anniversary weekend of the wildfires that began on Aug. 8, 2023, according to the Hawaiʻi Attorney General’s official investigation resource page. The timing also places the production alongside a broader community remembrance planned in Lahaina for Aug. 8, as Hoodline reported.
The homecoming is literal as well as thematic: six members of the cast and crew are from Maui, including three from Lahaina, and those Lahaina participants helped shape the production. The university says the full company includes 25 students, alumni, faculty members and theatre professionals, giving the show a distinctly community-built character.
“Lele Wale” is not arriving in Maui with a neat ending to Lahaina’s recovery story, because there is no neat ending yet. Instead, it offers music, movement and language as a way for the people connected to the town to keep telling its story on their own terms.
