You know the pose, the one that instantly says "moke," circa teenage years: slouched in a chair, head cocked, legs flopping out, knees loose, hands fumbling under a T-shirt. So when actor Alvin Chan strikes that posture to begin the play, "Choice," it's a spot-on, funny, low-key introduction to an intense subject.

Chan and fellow actor Reb Beau Allen star in the two-actor play, a collaborative endeavor between Honolulu Theatre for Youth and the Sex Abuse Treatment Center. One sticky Monday evening in mid-March, they're in character for community leaders, who've gathered at HTY's downtown digs to learn what "Choice" means.

HTY artistic director Eric Johnson offers a mantralike clue: "radical programming, carefully executed."

For starters, "Choice" is a different breed of drama. According to center manager of community education Christine Trecker, the project grew from a challenge: how to reach a tough crowd (teenage boys) about the sensitive topic of sexual-violence prevention.

The one-act dialogue fearlessly takes its intimate message where no such play has dared to go before: to small, exclusively male teenage audiences. The project just wrapped up its pilot year, having successfully staged performances at diverse youth-oriented venues in Hawai'i, from Saint Louis School to Palama Settlement to Lahainaluna High School on Maui.

And it dares to make the play appealing. "Choice" speaks to its audience without pandering; it never evades hard truths, yet sketches its familiar, school-age characters through humor, slang and pidgin (sex is initially referred to as "da kine"). Rumor has it that playwright Yokanaan Kearns' young son helped his dad to vet out any "cheesy" missteps, boosting the dialog's street cred. Both deserve accolades.

But the radically different theatrical approach doesn't stop there. After delivering compelling performances, the play's two twentysomething actors become simply "other men," joining the play's director, veteran HTY actor BullDog, for an extended post-performance rehash with their teenage audience — what Trecker describes as "a candid exchange about how tough it is to be a guy."

The center's Christy Werner trained the three actors for their star turn as educators; judging from their recent show, the three are quick studies. Sample discussion prompts are open-ended, thoughtful and practice what they preach: respect.

"Consensus," BullDog proposes, "comes through discussion."

Such discussion, for example, "erodes the normalizing of the jock stereotype" — or so says Allen, who doesn't share his jock character's repugnant views. Post-performance, the charismatic young actor sheds his role and offers his personal experience instead, modeling new ways that boys can relate when talking "da kine."

Chan, his versatile co-actor/educator, agrees: "It really equips you with what to do when you encounter these situations. It's not just about the act (of rape), but about understanding subtler things — like manipulation."

BullDog concurs. "We always take it back to effective communication with your partner."

"Choice" is a work in progress. Ultimately, the center and HTY hope to develop a companion play targeting teenage girls and take the program statewide. Their immediate goal is more tangible: reaching twice as many schools as they did in the program's pilot year. But finding seed money is an ever-present challenge.

Center executive director Adriana Ramelli remains undeterred: "Clearly, if we want to do prevention, we need to be developing effective programs that involve men."

So far, theater seems a good bet. One high school, Le Jardin Academy, in Kailua, screened "Choice" for upperclassmen; the other grades initiated a drive to bring the show back — for them. When female classmates admired the hip black "respect" T-shirts participants received, the boys wore them en masse on Valentine's Day.

Johnson muses, "What theater can do is put someone in the shoes of someone else. It's about empathy.

"It's something," he concludes, "we can't afford not to do."

Marie Carvalho is a freelance writer who covers the arts.