The long way
home

1. 1987 — 1999

   Raised in the language

   Kauʻi was raised in Hawaiian-medium education, and her first stage was an educational one — performing as a keiki in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi instructional films for the Department of Education (Nā Helu and Nā Waihoʻoluʻu o ke Ānuenue, 1987; Lōkahi, Family Values, 1988), and later the ʻAha Pūnana Leo short Kalanimainuʻu (1999). The language she was raised in became the instrument she would act, write, and teach through.

2. 2000 — 2009

   Training the instrument

   Named a State of Hawaiʻi Hawaiian Studies Sterling Scholar in 2000, she earned dual degrees in Theatre (Acting) and Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo (2006), then completed the Kahuawaiola Indigenous Teacher Education program (2008). Stage work at UH Hilo's Performing Arts Center (Company, Oklahoma!) ran alongside ʻŌiwi TV's Pōhai Moʻolelo internship and assistant directing Laʻamaikahiki at ʻImiloa Astronomy Center — performance, camera, and classroom in the same years.

3. 2014 — 2017

   The first MFA

   At UH Mānoa she played the title role in Lāʻieikawai — the inaugural Hawaiian-language mainstage production at Kennedy Theatre, taken to the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival — earning the cast's Poʻokela Award. Her thesis play Nā Kau a Hiʻiaka, which she wrote, directed, and produced in Hawaiian medium, premiered at BYU–Hawaiʻi and remounted across the islands, winning the Kennedy Theatre Playwriting Award. In 2017 she became the first graduate of the MFA in Hawaiian Theatre.

4. 2018 — 2022

   The classroom as stage

   She brought theatre into Hawaiian immersion classrooms — Ke Kula Kaiapuni ʻo Kahuku, then Ke Kula ʻo Nāwahīokalaniʻōpuʻu, where she teaches today. With Nāwahī's 11th graders she co-wrote, directed, and produced E Huliāmahi (2022), a bilingual slam-poetry play on the Hawaiian Renaissance. Her own one-woman moʻolelo series E Hoʻi i ka Piko (2021) carried six stories — from Kamapuaʻa to Kumu ʻUlu — in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi and Pidgin.

5. 2023 — now

   Screen & professorship

   Film work widened: My Partner (HIFF, 2022), Chief of Wars (Apple TV+, 2024), Da Fahm and The Butterfly Effect (2024), the voice of Matagi in Moana 2's ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi version (2026), and the Hanohano Hōkūleʻa haku mele songwriting win (2025). She co-wrote the feature Welu Ahi with Larry Kimura and Justina Mattos (2025). In 2026 she joined Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo as Assistant Professor, while continuing to teach theatre and Hawaiian language arts at Nāwahī.

Kauʻi's first teachers were the language itself and the classroom she grew up in — Hawaiian-medium education taught her that moʻolelo are not decoration on a performance but its foundation. Decades of hula under Kumu Hula Mapuana de Silva of Hālau Mōhala ʻIlima, where she has been a haumāna since 1988 and now trains as kumu hula, gave her the discipline of mele, oli, and dance as one continuous practice.

In theatre, her MFA work under Hailiʻōpua Baker at UH Mānoa shaped her conviction that Hawaiian can hold a full mainstage — tragedy, comedy, epic — without translation. Her writing has been sharpened by collaboration: co-writing E Huliāmahi with her own Nāwahī students, and the feature Welu Ahi with Larry Kimura and Justina Mattos. And the ʻōlelo noʻeau and moʻolelo she transcribed and researched through the Nā Hua Kēpau project remain her deepest script library.

Today Kauʻi's work runs on two tracks at once: as Assistant Professor at Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani, University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, she trains the next generation of Hawaiian-language performers and teachers; as a playwright and screenwriter she keeps building original work — for the stage, for film, and for the keiki who will inherit both.

Her hula practice continues toward kumu training, and her screen work — acting, voice, and writing in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, English, and Pidgin — keeps widening what the industry expects a Hawaiian story to sound like.

"Our history is a continuation of the past, so the generations to come may prosper from it and define a future of their own."

— from Kauʻi's own writing