‘Carp Who Would Not Quit and Other Animal Stories’ at CTC teaches children about Japanese traditions

Bring the keiki.

That's a Hawaiian word for young children or "little ones." And it's the target audience for Honolulu Theatre for Youth's production of "The Carp Who Would Not Quit and Other Animal Stories."

"We did create it for the youngest audiences," playwright and director Reiko Ho said from Honolulu in early January. "But I also always create for the kid in everybody."

What she's created is a three-actor, multi-puppet production designed to inspire cultural curiosity, especially about Japanese traditions. It brings to the stage of Minneapolis' Children's Theatre Company six Japanese folk tales and fables about that resilient carp, a grateful crane and rabbits and mice making mochi (Japanese rice cakes), among other things. It also features traditions found in the annual Obon festivals that honor ancestors, including live music from a taiko drum, a shakuhachi flute and a dulcimer-like koto.

"I hope these kids all go home and ask their parents to eat mochi and sing songs and say a few Japanese words," Ho said. "And have a conversation with their family about our culture."

Ho learned about that culture while growing up in a Hawaiian household with three other generations of women of Japanese descent.

"My great-grandmother was a picture bride," Ho said, speaking of young women sent from Japan to marry a worker in Hawaii based upon photographs provided by a matchmaker. "She came out to work on the plantations when she was 14 years old, sent by her family."

It was from her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother that Ho first learned the stories found in "The Carp Who Would Not Quit."

"The keiki will learn all the Japanese words for the animals," Ho said. "Language is a gateway to culture and I love hearing the language in the theater. It's also interactive. The kids will sing and dance and call out with the actors."

The play's six stories are tied together by wordless interludes involving a white butterfly.

"We believe that butterflies and moths often carry spirits of our loved ones to us to visit," Ho said. "To me, the white butterfly is my great-grandma visiting and telling the stories."

Like a butterfly, "The Carp Who Would Not Quit" has undergone a fascinating metamorphosis. Ho and the theater artists of the Honolulu Theatre for Youth created it for preschool audiences in early 2020 before the pandemic brought live performance to a halt.

"After it was canceled, we started doing a whole lot of digital media, including a television show, which we won Emmys for in Hawaii," Ho said. "And then it got picked up by classrooms on the continent. So what started out as something meant to be a touring show for classrooms in Hawaii and our own home theater stage became a show that was seen by default from the pandemic."

One who saw it was Peter Brosius, who's in his 27th and final season as artistic director of Children's Theatre Company. He initially came to CTC after being artistic director at the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, which was founded in 1955, predating Hawaiian statehood. It was on a visit to his old tropical stamping grounds that he experienced a performance of "The Carp Who Would Not Quit."

"I loved the joy the actors shared with the audience, the playful telling of these beloved stories, and watching the entire audience singing along with the actors," Brosius said earlier this month. "It's a company that creates wonderful original work, with much of it drawn from the history and culture of Hawaii, as well as the entire Asian Pacific region."

"For some of the kids who will come to this show, this will be their very first show they ever see in their entire life," Ho said. "I find that a huge responsibility and a great joy."

'The Carp Who Would Not Quit and Other Animal Stories'

When: Sat. through Feb. 18.

Where: Children's Theatre Company, 2400 3rd Av. S., Mpls.

Tickets: $15-$35, available at 612-874-0400 or childrenstheatre.org.

Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities arts writer. Reach him at wordhub@yahoo.com.