By Walt Dulaney

For the first four days of Spring Break 2007, thirty T-Shirt Theatre performers resisted the siren call of beach and bed to shuffle out to 5 hour rehearsals of their student-written and staff-sculpted show about folks who eclipse the joy of others.

Please let the question mark title register, for Bully? is meant to provoke self-assessment rather than finger-pointing. As a character says, "Every time you point a finger at some-one else - three of your fingers point back home."

By Walt Dulaney

Ever studied Gauguin's sketches of Brittany? Based on them, I'd have advised Paul to keep his day job (never guessing what passionate art his Tahitian escape would ignite).

In 26 years serving Kalihi George and I have often been amazed to discover unanticipated depths of wisdom and generosity in students we early judged to be hopelessly apathetic or terminally rascal.

By Walt Dulaney

[123 years ago Frank Stockton published a short story that grabbed the nation's fancy. It told of a barbaric King who built an arena with two fateful doors. Accused criminals opened one to become either dinner for a ravenous tiger or husband to an eager bride. This November the Alliance for Drama Education will cautiously unleash CLAWS - my re-minting of The Lady or the Tiger? as play, cartoon, outtake and opera to be performed by T-Shirt Theatre for 5,000 students and - hopefully - YOU!]

So what provokes a slow-poke playwright?

By George Kon

By Walt Dulaney

Q. SWEAT-city! … what's that?

A. It's the harrowing audition that sieves Chorus Line's characters.

In Ron Bright's remounting of the Tony-wreathed musical, the desperation to win-the-job is paramount. The prize is not just employment, but time out from anxiety itself. The failed star pleads for a job in the chorus singing Edward Kleban's searing words: Let me wake up in the morning, to find I have somewhere to go. Throw me a rope to grab on to. Use me. Choose me. Give me a place to fit in. I'm a dancer - a dancer dances.

By Walt Dulaney

Creak, thud, grrrkkk! … This rusty rhapsody plays as ADE's resident columnist shakes off five years' hibernation. For three years before ADE was born, I circulated missives trumpeting the triumphs of Hawai'i's drama educators. In 1980 this evolved into the "Go-fer", the Alliance for Drama Education's newsletter. For two decades we published Gutenberg style, 'til rising print and postage costs mandated electronic dispatch.

By Walt Dulaney

It's 2 a.m. several days after the bomb blasts in Britain, and a kaleidoscope of memories blocks sleep. I'm back in London directing college semesters abroad and it's orientation day 1974. The first rule we're taught is never pick up any abandoned package. The I.R.A. wants British troops out of Ireland, and is employing letter bombs as exclamation points.