31 years ago, Hawaii actor Terence Knapp was on television screens across the nation, playing Father Damien of Kalaupapa in a local production that won major national awards and was hailed by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin as "an exquisite blend of passion and history set forth with fascinating dramatic integrity."
Music was by a dream team of Nona, Keola and Kapono Beamer.
PBS Hawaii is dusting off this excellent production to broadcast locally--and to share once again with PBS stations across the country.
Terence Knapp has since retired from the University of Hawaii drama department. He was forever moved by the story of Damien ministering in Molokai's remote leprosy colony, and today is thrilled by the thought of Damien's canonization this fall.
The same is true for the executive director of Hawaii Public Television at the time, Mary Bitterman.
Mary gave me a copy of the play by the late Aldyth Morris. Here's one of my favorite passages--Damien says this to the audience:
"You see, a man enters the religious life in answer to a 'call.' Later, if he is lucky, he receives a 'call within a call,' he finds the niche that he was meant to fill. This is my niche. This is what I was meant to do. This is why I was born."
When a re-broadcast date is set, I'll let you know when the play, originally staged at the UH's Kennedy Theatre in 1976, and later adapted for television, will air on PBS Hawaii.
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