Jason Schwartz with Kathy Collins, popular announcer, MC, actress on Maui for her whole lifetime. She shares about her life as she became who she is …today. Always stretching- always growing, 10 13 2021
Summary & Full Timestamped transcript Below…
The video features an in-depth conversation between Jason Schwartz and Kathy Collins, a longtime Maui-based radio personality, actress, storyteller, and media mentor. Kathy shares her journey growing up on Maui, her early influences, and how she entered the world of radio and performance. She pays homage to her mentors, especially Sue Anne Louden, her high school drama teacher, and Misao Kubota, who shaped her speech and storytelling skills. Kathy discusses the cultural significance of Hawai‘i Creole English (Pidgin) and its evolution from a stigmatized dialect to a recognized creole language, emphasizing its role in local identity.
The discussion also highlights the vibrant arts community on Maui, the importance of mentorship, and the evolving opportunities for young creatives through programs like the Creative Media program at Maui College. Kathy recounts her creation of the popular comedic character “Tita” on radio, rooted in local humor and storytelling traditions, which later expanded into live performances and festivals. The conversation touches on the impact of technology and the internet in expanding the reach of Maui’s artists beyond geographical limitations.
Kathy reflects on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on local communities and gatherings, expressing hope for a return to normalcy while acknowledging the challenges brought by the crisis. Throughout, Kathy’s warmth, professionalism, and dedication shine through, revealing her as a beloved community figure who bridges traditional storytelling with modern media. The video concludes with Kathy’s plans to continue engaging with the community through various media platforms and her openness to mentoring future Maui artists.
Highlights
- [02:09] Kathy credits Sue Anne Louden, her high school drama teacher, for inspiring her passion for performance and the arts.
- [06:36] The Baldwin High School drama program fostered a collaborative, inclusive environment where everyone contributed beyond just acting.
- [12:08] Kathy praises Brian Cohn’s Creative Media program at Maui College for mentoring young creatives and elevating local talent to professional levels.
- [18:36] ️ Kathy explains how the comedic character “Tita” developed from a radio soap opera into a beloved storytelling persona embodying local culture.
- [25:02] Pidgin English (Hawai‘i Creole English) is explored as a legitimate language with grammar and cultural significance, shifting from stigma to pride.
- [36:00] ✨ The drama community on Maui historically served as a safe space for diverse youth to unite beyond racial and social divides.
- [47:18] Kathy reflects on the pandemic’s divisive effects on community life and expresses hope for renewed social connection.
Key Insights
- [02:48] ️ Radio as an Inclusive Acting Platform: Kathy’s entry into radio was strategic; the medium’s focus on voice rather than appearance made it an accessible platform for women and ethnic minorities in the 1970s. This illustrates how radio served as an early equalizer in media professions and allowed diverse voices to flourish despite on-screen underrepresentation.
- [06:36] Holistic Arts Education Builds Community: The Baldwin High drama program’s emphasis on teamwork, including technical and support roles, taught students the value of collaboration and humility. This approach not only built strong productions but fostered a community where every participant felt valued, laying a foundation for lifelong interpersonal skills and cultural openness.
- [10:54] Technology Breaks Geographic Barriers: The internet and digital media have transformed Maui’s arts community by enabling local creators to distribute their work globally. This democratization empowers emerging artists to gain exposure and compete on an international stage, highlighting the importance of media education programs that teach professional standards alongside creative skills.
- [18:36] Character Creation Rooted in Local Culture: Kathy’s “Tita” character exemplifies how local dialect, humor, and storytelling traditions can be woven into popular media to celebrate and preserve cultural identity. The character’s evolution from radio to live performance shows the power of media personas in connecting communities and sustaining oral histories.
- [25:02] ️ Linguistic Recognition of Pidgin: The discussion on Hawai‘i Creole English demonstrates how languages born from multicultural contact zones develop their own grammar and legitimacy over time. Kathy’s advocacy for recognizing Pidgin as a creole language challenges linguistic prejudice and affirms the cultural pride of local speakers, underscoring language’s role in identity formation.
- [36:00] Theater as a Social Equalizer: Maui’s drama community historically functioned as an inclusive refuge where marginalized youths could find acceptance, transcending racial and social tensions prevalent in broader society. This highlights theater’s unique role in fostering empathy, social cohesion, and cultural integration within diverse communities.
- [47:18] ❤️ Pandemic’s Social Impact: Kathy’s reflections on COVID-19 reveal the pandemic’s deep social fractures, even in close-knit communities like Maui. Her hope for restored communal gatherings underscores the essential human need for shared cultural experiences and the arts as vital to community resilience and healing.
Kathy Collins emerges from this conversation as a multifaceted artist and community leader whose work bridges traditional storytelling, cultural preservation, and modern media engagement. Her story offers valuable lessons on the power of mentorship, the importance of cultural identity in the arts, and the potential of technology to amplify local voices on a global scale.
Full Transcript
00:00
[Music] hello everyone i’m jason schwartz and i’m supposed to be the host and listening but i have a guest and i gave her an earful before i started i have kathy collins hey kathy aloha jason i i i’m afraid i’m guilty of the uh i want to make sure i tell my guests how wonderful they are and how central they are you know you guys have seen me doing this show and you’re on we’re on akaku maui community media kathy’s on there she’s sometimes doing her own show sometimes
00:53
she’s involved as a hostess of a panel for a political thing or a social thing and then you look down the radio and you say that voice that sounds like it is it’s kathy collins but is that the same kathy collins that did the tita thing is that her she’s a comedian and she’s a hostess and a speaker did she also own a radio’s gym radio station with her husband right barry yes so i moved into your space by the way when you moved out of jonathan starr’s building i moved into that space oh in
01:33
the dragon on center see a small world we we all in us we circle each other and then we realize wow those circles all fit together they’re not circles at all that’s that’s true it’s a moving moving conglomerate isn’t it how did you get into all this i mean you obviously have a a great voice for um audio you’ve been here all your life or what’s good i grew up on maui i went to public school and was fortunate enough to have sue anne louden as my drama teacher at baldwin high school
02:09
and once i started performing in in plays there i knew that um this was something i wanted to do and but you know this was mid 70s when i graduated and you didn’t see asians on the big screen or the little screen much and so doing the responsible thing i thought well can’t make a living as an actress but the radio seemed like the perfect profession because on the radio it doesn’t matter how tall i am what color i am um or even that i’m a female actually at the time it was better to be a female because
02:48
um equal employment and all of that i was uh known as a double token female and ethnic so it was easy to get in the door um but as my several mentors told me it’s staying in there that uh that counts uh but that’s why i got into radio because i felt like i could i could act with my voice some and so at 17 i got my first job in radio and have it’s been part of my life ever since there have been years when i haven’t been involved with a radio station but for most of my life radio has been my my
03:28
number one passion um wow number one i i i’m so blessed to be able to do um a lot of things that i really enjoy doing yeah well you know i remember when i came to maui i thought about small fish in a big pond big fish in a small pot here on maui if you say kathy collins i don’t know if anybody that doesn’t know you or has had experience of enjoying your really very beautiful and pleasant delivery that uh is very warm and comforting and you know um you’re my choice too i mean i i reckon you’ve been doing it all these
04:13
years and when you say sue and loud my brain remembers i remember suanne myself i got here i was sort of at the end of her reign if you will at the high school mcqueen you know eric to the big city to both l.a and new york and uh doing well and um many folks who went through the drama program and were miss louden’s kids um became very successful in areas other than um theater judge cardoza is one that we always were so proud of i believe he was in her first drama class um he was just a few years
05:06
above me but um and when we had our big testimonial big tribute to miss loudon um upon her retirement he was one of the alumni who who came forward and delivered a really beautiful tribute testimonial to her so you know the skills that we learned in this loudon’s classes and after school activities went far beyond the stage she really taught us a lot of um valuable life skills you know i mean you know team respect and and so forth but um yeah she’s she has really helped to shape hundreds not probably thousands of
05:56
careers and lives well so there’s a great example of right of a a great mentor someone that really grew people up and created this environment to let people shine and be their own individual shine you know that’s what i always appreciated she took everyone as who they are and let them be the greatest at who and what they are so that’s true and um the thing about miss louden’s um theater classes and the drama club was that um as you say she let everybody shine and there were no stars
06:36
uh you know you couldn’t you couldn’t um only audition and um and get roles and perform you had to know how to build sets um run around gather props do makeup for other people it was uh it was a very well-rounded education in theater craft that she gave us and and she instilled that in us there weren’t any no prima donnas at the baldwin drama everybody we were all one huge ensemble in every aspect you know eric gilliam is just a great example he’s a fine um actor and singer and dancer
07:24
but you know he also gets down and dirty he will build his own sets he will string up his lighting and um and do his own makeup and and sew his own costumes and everything it’s uh that was the kind of education we got with miss loudon nobody got to just sit back and be pampered and catered to we all we all pitched in uh to help each other what a great thing that’s a great thing i got to be in that space when i i watched um someone put a play together and we’re using suan’s space there in the back
08:04
wanted just a fun space to be in it felt like you’re behind stage out of theater really was a a great experience back there a lot of great energy in that mini theater and i see that you you i was over at maui community college i guess is it called community anymore at it’s now the maui of hawaii and uh brian brian cohn who wrote acted direct brother from another mother he did get a job where eric was great i thought eric was great and i loved seeing willie k playing the straight man while eric was the it was very great and
08:47
then that the next movie cooliana’s i guess it’s now maui right so how are those kids lucky enough to have brian teaching and directing a program there in the arts yes he created the creative media program and it brings you and he teaches classes and i get to come and be a guest on in a couple of his his classes yeah well you are a media you know you that’s why i know these kids need media mentors they need and what they’re doing mentors and people that move them forward well we all need mentors in every aspect of
09:30
life i think and uh fortunately maui just seems to be it’s the kind of place that i think generates and nurtures those kinds of relationships because it’s uh you know it’s still small town enough that um the community functions in that way but it’s not so small that uh we can’t we don’t have just a wealth of resources i think we’re just at the right stage you know we’re not honolulu nor do we ever want to be um a very special place see when i look at this place i’m
10:13
thinking i think about the immense amount of talent and when they have it in all areas there’s only limited walls around them in water but now with the internet almost like i guess it was the early 90s right now it’s a whole generation of people that know techno stuff and if if we were to create an outlet and a way to have that product show to the world from here where the boundaries are suddenly down eric can do white hawaiian videotape it for example and show it all over the world or you can do live performances
10:54
from here and show them anywhere around the world i’m i’m only using that as an example to say that the things that we do here now have legs we can go everywhere so our our borders are it’s almost like we can walk on water we can go all around the world and share larger than our population base and our limitations so this is a really important time so brian is sitting there at the school i think there to show kids hey you can write something you can produce it and write it and get your friends talented people
11:29
like like you and others around you who i love watching the movie because oh there’s david sandel dropping his art the way he always does i mean the things about this movie imagine this industry and that love that we all share sharing to the world well we’re just beginning it but you know that’s a story for another day maui arts and music is a showcase place for you and all these kids to show themselves to the world i’m totally jazzed on that fact that people like you kathy and brian eric and
12:08
amy i go on and on already have had a modicum of success and now we’re there to help be that runway for the young people because it is the right time well you know the kids this generation of kids they’re already doing that on their level they’re doing tick tock and instagram and my granddaughter who lives in michigan is a an influencer uh you know because they grew up with this technology a program like brian’s helps them take it to another level um he instills and that he takes it from being you know the the
12:50
this because the internet is the the delivery system yeah it is it’s a little ecosystem all on its own and but at a certain level at that community you know it’s kind of like like meeting in the quadrangle at high school where everybody’s getting together and gossiping and seeing what each other’s wearing and and talking about the newest dances and this and that uh it’s now a worldwide thing and the kids are just that’s why they’re all glued to their their phones their
13:23
screens brian is helping to take teach those who want to do more with it who want to make a career out of um film music whatever and uh and giving them the tools to take it to a professional level which which i think is is quite admirable because even with the the great technology of today you still got to do a lot of hard work if you want to succeed at anything you know whatever your passion or your craft is and that’s that’s that courses there you know is exactly that it’s uh to be able to
14:11
give people the opportunity to get the skills to get on a professional level i was just saying that on a on internet we can deliver on a professional level here it’s the world has shifted where we can compete if you want to call it compete with others all over the world it’s an exciting time um look at our friend what’s his name destined i don’t know and maybe you do that right daniel twice what a marvelous right excuse the pun marvelous uh film that is um and you can really see the influence
14:53
of his uh upbringing on maui is the ethnicity as well as just the you can see how um maui life shaped the his vision and the person that he is it’s it’s i really enjoyed the film i’m thinking about going to see it a third time oh i haven’t seen it yet but i i remember thinking i got to go see it oh okay all right that was funny you know the because i always stay brian taught me this i always stay till the screen goes dark through the credits and i was really happy i did because this film
15:33
doesn’t just have one little thing at the end there are two scenes that happen during and after the credits so i you know and i felt bad for all the people who got up and left as soon as the credits started rolling but uh so i stayed till the very end and another couple did they were sitting up front and then it all ended and the lights came up and and the couple got up and uh and the gentleman i mean we’re acquaintances i don’t know him well but he he says hey kathy that’s you how about that huh
16:09
danny isn’t that something maui boy and oh i just got chicken skin it was like yeah you know it’s um it really is beautifully done it’s a wonderful film and i don’t i don’t usually go to see superhero films i’m this is like the maybe the third film in the whole marvel universe that i’ve ever watched and wow but it’s it’s wonderful you need to see it okay i was thinking because i remember when we first i first heard his name he was working with brie larson who uh
16:45
yeah yeah right right and uh and that his stuff from long ago you know these film festivals and all these opportunities to show things show uh future potential you know i i had a thing before those american idol i was getting ready to do a thing here before the internet that’s a story to showcase talent and then they do brown bags to stardom which is taking kids who are you know dear and going all the way we’re in a new age it’s really nice to see such a an opportunity for a young kid
17:23
from here to take his brilliance and his talents and be able to have them go like they have all the you know i’ve seen stuff on maui when i see productions i don’t think i could see a better production anywhere i’ve seen impeccable extraordinary performances here absolutely yeah i think it was probably 20 years ago jamie foxx was here with eric on stage doing something and i remember i didn’t know if jamie was an actor from here or where he was but he was terrific and eric was terrific and you know i don’t have to
18:00
tell you but our audience if you go looking into the archives of maui people and theater and stuff some of these guys here have been extraordinarily talented kathy has been doing shows we have so much talent here i think we we’re gonna have to share it to the world you know and share some of our archives to show i’m sure that brian has tape i’m sure a lot of people have tape of amazing things that have gone on here on maui we have had an amazing run of talent and uh yes we do how did you become the tit on stage how
18:36
did that develop um actually when my late husband and i had a at an afternoon show together uh on the radio we developed uh um okay well we we we did a radio soap opera a comedic soap opera and we wrote and produced five days a week like little two and a half three minute pieces it was the tales of the lahaina triangle and it took place at the hale haole hotel and the two uh recurring characters were the bartender in the mahalo lounge chemo chemo tunnel chemo therapy excuse me chemotherapy and the cocktail waitress was polly
19:28
tunnel and her brother lincoln tunnel uh and we just you know it was just full of puns and we got to do voices and things and the character of paulie tunnel was really she was just a theater and um later we moved to another radio station and instead of doing all that work with this five day a week soap opera we thought well you know polytunnel was such a fun character so um and i couldn’t think of a name so we just started calling her tira and tierra did um a different feature every day there was um
20:11
chicken skin theater which was scary stories mostly hawaiian legends and ghost stories um ask tira which was like an you know dear abby kind of an advice column but of course all in pigeon and all ridiculous uh tira cooks which was recipes and they have spam and leaking muy and um believe it or what which was um hawaii trivia local trivia and then on fridays we’d do tira out which was just ranting on whatever she felt like it might be political it might just be a pet peeve something anyway we we started doing that just on
20:52
the radio and um i don’t know you know like i said in high school i started acting and i was also very active in the speech program misao kubota bless her heart who um she and miss louden were were partners speech and drama and mrs kubota doesn’t get the recognition that miss louden has but she was instrumental in shaping my eventual career so i participated i was a member of the national forensic league and we did speech tournaments and festivals so i had done a lot of storytelling and
21:32
uh humorous and dramatic interpretation performances all through high school so the storytelling thing just kind of came naturally and we found that people really enjoyed this did a character and then i got invited to um by a listener on the radio i can’t even remember remember it was at the cameron center and it was for a non-profit group but they asked me if i would come and do that chicken skin theater kind of thing for them uh so i did i did like 45 minutes of storytelling spooky stories in pidgin
22:12
and it just kind of grew from there jeff gear who is a master storyteller he was the uh for almost 30 years he was the culture and arts drama specialist actually with the city and county of honolulu and jeff is an actor an improv artist a puppeteer and a master storyteller and so he produced a three-day storytelling festival every year for the city and county and um was visiting friends here on maui and they told them oh you got to listen to this lady on the radio she does this night before christmas thing in pigeon
23:37
storyteller just for me you know it just i i really felt like an imposter for the first few years um but but yeah i’m a storyteller now and an actress we have audience all over the world you don’t see them out there but we have a library of great shows and now you are one of them where they’re going to get to discover the incredible people on maui like you they don’t know what a titta is what’s a tip [Laughter] well i used to do storytelling um weekly at the mckenna resort for the guests only
24:19
so before i would bring tira out i always needed to give them a little bit of explanation about pidgin english which is the unofficial language of hawaii it’s now officially recognized as a creole it’s hawaii creole english hce we call it pidgeon a tira is a local girl with a lot of attitude who generally uh pidgin is her first language uh and as i explained to the guests at the resort you find the equivalent everywhere you know all around the world but uh here in hawaii they’re known as
25:02
tirans is um pretty obviously uh um sister although it is not a hawaiian word because there’s no t in the hawaiian language but when i was a kid tita is what we used to call them tiras and it wasn’t something that was necessarily a compliment back then it was a local girl who liked to beat up other girls you know and then with the hawaiian renaissance and an awakening of people local people but mostly people with native hawaiian um ethnicity um their this newfound pride and interest in their own culture really took hold
25:57
and then atira became something to be proud of because it meant a local girl or woman who was grounded in them in being uh local like i tell the the um visitors you don’t have to have hawaiian blood to be a terra you don’t even have to be born here but uh generally athira is somebody who was raised here and then i usually tell them of the perfect example of a who migrated here who was not born here in hawaii and that is uh the volcano goddess because belly wasn’t born in hawaii she came here
26:52
from uh far away polynesia many many many centuries ago made her home here and she definitely has that tierra attitude with a big heart you know you just have to show her respect and that’s that’s pretty much the best way to handle that so let me ask you you mentioned about miss kubota’s class and sue when i hear you speaking i mean when the titus speak she’s got a character that you put on what you have you speak so clearly were you always speaking clearly or was it miss kubota
27:32
that said hey wait make sure you pronounce all your words my mother did that to me but was that how you did it um because i was in speech and drama right through high school enunciation and projection and all of that were just were instilled in us um and i’ve always been um bilingual when i when i i’ve been i’ve been asked to do storytelling at many different schools including kamehameha schools from the preschool all the way through high school and i gave him a little lesson in pidgin and
28:17
i explained that when i was in school pidgeon was frowned upon and um and even in some families because the perception was that pigeon was broken english that only uneducated people spoke pidgin yeah and that was crude um and fortunately now it has gotten the recognition that it deserves i always i think of pidgin as the true language of aloha it was born on the plantations when a people of many different ethnicities and backgrounds had to learn to communicate and that is why pidgin contains mostly english words but words
29:01
from each of the different ethnic groups that made up the plantation population and there is a grammatical structure to pidgin pidgin is basically the hawaiian language with english and other words that’s why our that’s why it sounds backwards to people you know in pidgin you say oh so on my head or you know cute that boy that’s the sentence structure from hawaii where the adjective and then the the subject follows that way um vela vela you know so it does it does have grammar that’s one of their
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the requirements for it for a language or to be accepted or recognized as a creole it has to be formed from existing languages it has to have some sort of grammar it can’t just be nonsense stuff put together and it has to be spoken by at least a couple of generations as their first language and hce hawaii creole english pidgin fits all of that so um so i always tell the kids you know if you speak regular english i don’t call it proper english that’s what we were told before speak proper english
30:32
well i call it regular standard english and you speak pidgin then real you’re bilingual because pigeon is recognized as a creole and that makes you smarter than the people who think pidgin is broken english so i grew up bilingual um fortunately for me my parents my the adults in my family my extended family did not try to squish the pigeon out of me but they did my parents always um admonished me to remember and i teach this to the kids that i speak to appropriate use of language you know because you’re in school or in
31:24
the workplace where standard english is the norm then that’s that’s what you speak you know but when you’re out playing with your friends or socializing uh and pidgin is being spoken well you know you sound pretty uppity if you if you’re trying to is that formal american english what about hawaii you know with the immersion schools with the hawaiian immersion schools learning hawaiian language i am i am interested to see as time goes on you know where that will go whether it will be taught
32:03
past the hawaiian group and somehow i’m not sure but the great thing is um i i think it’s just a marvelous thing i i studied um hawaii at it was mcc then with kyope raymond only because um and i remember people telling me why would you want to study hawaiian it’s a dead language and i said i would love to study latin as well um for different reasons uh was there a pidgin class not at the time there might be now uh has a curriculum in hce but at the time that i went it was it was strictly
32:46
hawaiian i took hawaiian language and hawaiian culture classes from kiopi raymond because to me hawaiian the hawaiian language is just so so beautiful it’s poetic it’s um and to think there’s only 13 letters um the 13th being the okina the glottal stop uh but i just i i just wanted to study the language for one thing i i wanted to know about what the songs i would i was listening and singing along to meant um but i just thought and at the time puna naleo the hawaiian immersion preschool
33:27
was just a couple of years old a few years old and now oh my gosh we’ve got a generation of kids who who’ve been in hawaiian immersion right through until their their senior year and graduating and it’s no longer these the schools are no longer confined to kids with hawaiian blood um you know there are children with with not a drop of hawaiian blood whose parents felt it was important for whatever reasons everybody has their own different reasons to place them in hawaiian immersion and that’s a real
34:06
commitment when you do that because you can’t just say oh i want my kids to learn hawaiian and put them in there it’s a commitment that the parents have to make the family has to make as well they need to learn so that they can help the child yeah that’s why i was wondering about uh pidgin as a wonderful so you’re multilingual you’re not just bilingual i’m not you know i’m not i’m not fluent in well you know if we had a movie you know someone could say i know 83 languages
34:40
and then they spout off curse words in 83 languages you know that sounds like saturday night live or uh you know when i think back through the years i you know i i don’t know why it is maybe because it’s right where you are you’re talking about all the people that i know and love keopi raymond what a terrific teacher talk about an experience he speaks like an eloquent american english guy and then if you flip a switch his pigeon is i really extraordinary and he was also the translator for sam
35:19
in court so he’s also an official hawaiian translator and his hawaiian his spoken hawaiian is so beautiful and uh yeah well and he does he doesn’t look it but he does have hawaiian blood oh yeah i’m sure he does and you know i we have such a great you say it here we have a great community you probably also learned that back at sue anne i don’t think we have racial issues when it comes to our theater community what a great learning experience that everybody mixes so well it’s a
36:00
that’s a great blessing that alone to take that into the world from that class was a great thing that’s true uh you know when i was in high school we did have racial uh tension uh there was kill holiday day yeah the boys would go around looking for caucasian kids to beat up there was also slap a jack day and some of the other the browner ethnicities because japanese kids were looked at as being stuck up uh and maybe we were you know um yeah and uh but the it would they were all coming to a
36:42
head then in the 70s the the fights between the different groups miss louden’s class miss loudoun’s class was a place or her drama room was somewhere where misfits all fit in and so it went beyond um blurring the racial lines it wasn’t just that it was the kids who were taunted for being sissies or butchie um the kids who looked weird the kids who were just loners um everyone and anyone was welcome in the drama room and because of the miss loudoun’s teaching philosophy everyone learned to
37:30
get along and get together and i think theater at all levels anywhere you go kind of tends to do that it does draw people or who are you know maybe uh you know we all march to different drummers but in the in theater we can we can make beautiful music together yeah yeah well let me ask you you have here we are in 2021 as a very when i hear that number it amazes me i’ve been doing my thing now 30 years and i guess we’re going to start showcasing it some of it we may have spoken to here lightly
38:13
but i i expect that you’re going to be shining on for another you want to give yourself another 30. well i want to see you as one of our leaders for the future um what’s on your horizon i turn on akaku and i say kathy collins is there doing today’s maui daily well he just asked me to fill in uh i happen to catch you you know i always you know you’re look really like peanut butter if there’s something that needs to be done send kathy she can smooth it over and make it perfect
38:50
she fills in all the holes we need someone to be up there on stage someone that can take it if it comes from the left or the right can handle it all right you’re a veteran that um shows her experience and it’s a very beautiful thing cancer well thank you jason i just keep doing what i do for as long as i can i i enjoy it i love making people laugh i like making people cry you know i do enjoy serious drama as well um and i i just enjoy getting to interact with people i really really miss the pre-pandemic
39:32
gatherings the public gatherings the friday town parties um i did a lot of um polynesian show hosting every sunday on the pride of america i hosted two shows and then i was also flying to oahu once or twice a week to emcee the luau shows over at sea life park and waikiki aquarium through the production company that i i work for and my favorite parts of it they were all wonderful shows that malu productions does but my favorite part would always be after the luau and hundreds of guests are leaving and they get to go through the
40:18
aloha line and get their pictures taken with the beautiful dancers and talk story and i i just love that i love i love meeting people talking to people that’s why i enjoy emceeing so much because even if you’re just one person on stage and everybody else is out there you’re still interacting you know and sharing this energy and i enjoy that i enjoy that as much as i do performing in plays and taking on i roles my parents my parents taught me to read my father taught me to read when i was two
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my dad always said that the two greatest gifts he could give me as a father were learning to read and learning to appreciate music because both those gifts once i had them once i knew how to read and enjoyed music that nothing no one could ever take those from me and uh and he was right and i was an only child so um books were my um closest companions for a lot of my formative years i understand to get to see the world yes i went into this fantasy world i was always daydreaming and play acting and then i
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started writing little skits and things and performing them for my parents very indulgent parents that’s very fortunate well we are very fortunate to have you you are a gift ever you know i i said it a couple of times but i know it’s true if kathy collins is there you set the mood for a great experience you know you as an emcee add that warmth and tie things together in a beautiful way like a bow really i just thank you i i try i try to do that i figure people come to shows or events to enjoy themselves and my job as
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the mc or host is to facilitate that and i’m just i’m just so lucky i get to just be a maui girl well i know you around the world you can have cathy fly to you and do your luau are you happy to do chicago no i know that we’ll see where it goes anything that is there an easy way for people to be in touch with you i always wonder how do people comfortably get in touch with stars like you yeah i say stars contact me through facebook you know i’ve got okay i um i for years jeff gear the storyteller on
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oahu i was talking about he’s just he gave up already but i’ve never had a website a web page i know i probably should but and that’s the main reason i’m on facebook is to help publicize whatever i happen to be involved with but you can reach me through facebook you can i’m on messenger you can uh private message me which is how you got a hold of me that’s probably the easiest way to contact me um i write a column for the maui news it used to be weekly but because of the pandemic and
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um the subsequent budget cuts it’s every other wednesday but my email address is printed there in the maui news okay at the end of my column so that’s that’s an easy way to get a hold of me but yeah anything that you want anything that why you have an audience in this informal you’d like to share with them i just want to make sure that sometimes i have guests that might say later oh i should have told them about this is coming up or this is how i feel um you’re so transparent when i you seem so
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genuine in in every time on or off camera or mike you know well thank you i you know i’m fortunate i have this um i have several avenues in which i can express myself my column in the maui news i i know i’m i’m really blessed to have been given that gift when they first approached me at the maui news 11 years ago to do the column they said you know you can write about whatever you want we just want a maui girl’s perspective on things now at that time columns ran daily in the maui news
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there were five columnists and each person had a different day of the week and yet actually none of them were born and raised on maui so they had asked me just you know whatever you want to write about so now i i’ve got this this forum whatever i want to write about i can and now of course ben lowenthal who is also a lifelong maui resident i love ben’s columns uh so you know i’m lucky i’ve got that soapbox if i want it i try not to use it for really personal stuff except for indulging
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in reminiscing because people seem to like that i’ll write about um old old-time maui maui the maui i grew up in and that always gets some comments from people not only those who were here in the 60s and before i’ll write about my mom’s growing up too sometimes but also um more recent residents who appreciate learning about what maui was like before they arrived so i do have that i i guess considering it’s a worldwide audience i i get you know this has been on my mind quite a bit
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lately the fact that uh you know almost two years ago when we first started hearing about this code at 19 and uh and precautions were being taken i’m sure i’m not the only one who thought well okay we’re gonna deal with this for a few months maybe three to six months maybe and then it’s all back to normal i you know i don’t know a soul who would have guessed that here we’d be 20 months later um this is the new normal um to me the the saddest part about it is how it’s
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just fractured uh relationships it’s been so polarizing um and politicized and and i don’t want to sound all pollyanna but you know it’s just it it saddens me that um that we’ve come to this point even in a community as tight-knit and as tolerating as maui has traditionally been you know and um it’s such a shame because at first the first six months of the pandemic it was kind of like well the silver lining is that we have to stay home we can’t be out working and partying so we’re getting to know our
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our close families and ourselves a lot better and you know i wish that were still the case but unfortunately it seems to have for some people made it made it even worse and i’m really looking forward to the day when we can comfortably gather again in large numbers like i said i miss the friday town parties and dancing with people and uh and hugging and all of that and i know we’ll get back to that i know we’ll probably be wearing masks for the rest of our life it’s so funny you know
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when i was a kid and the japanese tourists would come and they’d be wearing their masks and we thought what are they afraid of catching and it turns out they were being polite trying to prevent their own germs from spreading everybody else yeah i think it was like after 9 11 look at what we became accustomed to you know in the first the first few months it was what do you mean we have to we can’t we can’t accompany our loved one all the way to the gate and and we have to have people inspect our bags we can’t
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carry liquid we gotta take off our shoes and now that’s just all normal part of traveling you know it’s gonna be like that with this you know that is sad that gives us a opportunity in these times to have people reflect about it and be more gentle and loving that’s what i get about you your loving ness comes out and uh you have yourself well you’re under a rainbow that’s the perfect place for you i took my that background photo i took that from the driveway of my home in kahului i walked out one morning wow
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that’s great i ran back in to get my my phone and snapped a picture of it well kathy you’ve been a terrific guest i know this may be a little different your your normal interviews and stuff maybe aren’t quite like this my own unique informal style well rarely on this end of the interview usually i’m the one asking the questions and learning about um interesting people so i i don’t get interviewed a lot so this has been fun you made it very very comfortable for me thank you thank
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you well you are a gift to us all here on maui kathy collins and to all you in the parts of the world you’re gonna get to know kathy more and more as time is going on because i have her on my radar and i got some things i think we’re gonna have her be doing she’s gonna help create and bring all kinds of people up the chain of life kathy thank you for joining me really thank you thank you jason i very much appreciate this i hope you speak to me soon and you too aloha i’ll be speaking to you this soon
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i’m sure all right and all you out there in television and radio is a television media lab thank you for joining us and we will see you again aloha [Music]
