As you might expect from its subject matter, the new Kumu Kahua play "Living Pidgin," is as eclectic as a local-style Thanksgiving spread. If given proper attention, it's just about as challenging to digest.

Dizzyingly diverse in style and genre but unified by "Pidgin Guerrilla" Lee Tonouchi's stated desire to "find a place for pidgin," it's a theatrical enactment of Tonouchi's essays, poems, short stories and skits, sewn together by Kumu Kahua artistic director Harry Wong.

"Pidgin" includes a libidinous director (Jaeves Iha) who strives to make films "like Edgy Lee, li'dat," but is upended by a not-so-naive reality-star wannabe (Julia Nakamoto) and her thick-skulled (but is he?) brother (but is he?) played by Jeremy Wagner; a washed-out businessman (Darryl Tsutsui) who hangs out at Fort Street Mall musing on "7 Deadly Local Sins" as he laments the loss of his job, his wife and his coffee; and a PlayStation-playing idealist (D. Tafa'i Silipa) whose dreams of saving the world as the super-heroic Hawaiian Man are stymied by the realities of life in modern Hawai'i (as broken to him by his trusty sidekick Haole Boy).

For all its surface comedy, "Living Pidgin" asks important questions about the nature of pidgin and the lives of the people whose cultures it represents. Ultimately, it also considers how an informed appreciation for pidgin might give additional recognition — and power — to those who face discrimination for speaking it.

Iha, 23, a former student of Tonouchi's, is well aware of the stigma that follows pidgin speakers. He grew up speaking pidgin with friends but was encouraged to speak only "proper" English at home and during school.

"My parents talked crazy more pidgin than anyone else I knew, but they didn't want me to talk like that, so I could go to college and get a good job," Iha says. "I think they were misguided. When they come to see the play, I hope they trip out — and instead of feeling like (pidgin) is a barrier, they'll feel proud, that they won't be discriminated against, and they won't discriminate against each other."

"To my family, speaking pidgin means you're illiterate, stupid, maybe uncultured, which is kind of funny because pidgin is its own kind of culture," he says.

PIDGIN DEMOCRACY

Tsutsui, 50, says he auditioned for the play specifically because of its pidgin content. He grew up at a time when everyone, rich or poor, educated or not, spoke pidgin.

Tsutsui remembers fondly the heyday of Booga Booga, the local comedy troupe whose pidgin-heavy routines made major inroads in popular Island culture. And he's concerned about what its loss signifies for local culture.

"In schools, (pidgin) seems to relegate itself to the so-called lower classes," says the actor, who has worked as a substitute teacher at various schools around the Island. "You rarely hear it in private schools these days.

"When I was young, it was just the way you communicated — culture to culture, family to family," he says. "With this next generation, it seems to more clearly be a class distinction."

"Living Pidgin" touches on these situations and other pidgin-related issues, from its inherent inclusiveness and adaptability to efforts to standardize it for academic purposes.

The title itself serves a dual purpose, indicating a way of life, while at the same time speaking to pidgin's ongoing evolution.

"I don't know how many times I hear, 'Oh, that's not pidgin,' but I think part of the message of the play asks, 'What is pidgin?' " said Wong, the artistic director. "Then you realize that it changes, that it isn't a stagnant thing. ...

"Pidgin is as democratic as you can get."

EH, DAS ME!

Tonouchi, whose "Gone Fishing" was staged at Kumu Kahua in 2004, had unsuccessfully entered several of the works in Kumu Kahua's annual playwright contest, but it wasn't until last year that the pieces started to come together in Wong's imagination.

"I never consciously thought about putting 'em all together," Tonouchi says of the works. "If I do a poem, I do a poem — separate. If I do a short story, I do a short story — separate. Poems, short stories, essays all put together? I guess it's one good experiment."

Collaborating to create a thematic and theoretical glue for the production, Wong and Tonouchi intersperse vignettes drawn from Tonouchi's essays — a litany of "Dey Say If You Talk Pidgin You No Can" responses from pidgin-speaking students, a note from an indignant reader passed to Tonouchi during a meal at Big City Diner — between the longer pieces.

Ensemble members deliver the vignettes, taking turns mimicking the author's distinct look, voice and mannerisms. And that, Tonouchi says, was not his idea.

"That was little bit sneaky, brah," he says. "They had their rehearsal, and they was going have their photos for the promo stills. I never found out the secret location until one hour before I had to go.

"And when I got there, I thought, 'I think something's up' because there was this guy get one mustache, this odda guy get one mustache, and everyone's wearing baseball cap backwards, everybody get aloha shirt tucked. Everybody kinda looked like ... me!

WHO YOU IS

For Wong, the works, the performances and the discussion they invite point to an interpretation of pidgin as something natural, something unifying, and something worthy of respect.

"If we get nervous or scared, (pidgin) is something we fall back on," says Wong, speaking to a central message in the piece "Pidgin Wawrs."

"Like if I were from France and I burned my hand, the first thing out of my mouth would be 'Mon dieu!' We revert back to our first language.

"Why can't that be the thing that you use first, not the thing you fall back on?" he asks. "Why can't that be the means of expression that you first choose?"

For Tonouchi, who worried that parts of the play might seem too preachy or academic, the message is simpler:

"I guess the common theme throughout all the works is, 'Be yourself; be proud of who you is,' " Tonouchi says. "That's not always so easy."

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.