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directed by Lorenzo DeStefano
www.shipmentdayplay.com / www.visitationsmemoir.com
“Shipment Day” tickets – https://manoavalleytheatre.com/shows-tickets-3/
For more information please visit
www.shipmentdayplay.com / www.manoavalleytheatre.com
Imagine that you have stumbled upon a family secret, a relative in exile that no one has ever spoken of.
Intrigued, you meet that relative, a Portuguese cousin, and spend the next seventeen years, until her death,
getting to know the circumstances of her life, her struggles and her quiet achievements.
Such was the case when Hawaii-born playwright & director, Lorenzo DeStefano, learned about his late cousin, the well-known leprosy activist Olivia Robello Breitha.
“SHIPMENT DAY” is set in Honolulu between 1934 and 1937 and dramatizes Olivia’s traumatic early life experiences. The play chronicles her diagnosis with the condition at 18, her two and a half year confinement at Kalihi Hospital,
Up to the day before her shipment to Kalaupapa, the Hansen’s disease settlement on Molokai where,
as Hawaii State Department of Health parolee #3306, Olivia would spend the next seventy years of her life, until her death there in 2006, at the age of 90.
— AUDIENCE COMMENTS —
— 2016 PlayBuilders of Hawai’i Reading & 2018 MVT World Premiere —
“The characters are dynamic and well-rounded.” / “Touching… Eye-opening.”
“A beautifully staged look at a painful era in island history. The playwright/director and a consistently talented cast bring the story to life with memorable success.” – -Honolulu Star-Advertiser
“Exciting, heart wrenching, and peppered with comedy to ease the tension here and there, Shipment Day invites you to experience Olivia Robello’s story yourself. ..poignant and beautiful…this is a very interesting and important story to tell. – Hitting the Stage
“Brilliant. Heart-wrenching. I can?t wait to see this play in its entirety!”
“So very touched by this presentation. How blessed we were to be introduced to this inspiring lady.”
“Very movingly performed. Actors committed to telling this story.”
“History comes alive. How has a story like this not been told before?”
“Amazing show. Loved everything about it.” / “A must see.”
“An eye opening true story. An emotional and entertaining play.”
“The characters are dynamic and well-rounded.” / “Touching… Eye-opening.”
“Makes the far away past be immediately right at our doorstep here and now in all its horrific, moving, tangible, shame-inducing intensity.”
“Shipment Day is about humans and our treatment of each other, about connection and yearning, loneliness and fear, fulfillment, hate, ignorance. This play has it all. Major standing ovation.”
2016 PLAYBUILDERS OF HAWAII NEW WORKS FESTIVAL
Best Play – “Shipment Day” by Lorenzo DeStefano
Best Actress – Kuulei Shafee
Best Actor – William Ha’o
August, 2015,
directed by the playwright.
a November 2018 world premiere for the Manoa Valley Theatre, Honolulu. First developed at the Road Theatre Company in Los Angeles as a one-act, “Shipment Day” won Best Play at the 2016 Playbuilders of Hawaii New Works Festival. DeStefano’s other plays include “Providence”, from the screenplay by David Mercer, and “Camera Obscura”, from the 17 million word “Inman Diary”. Developed at Seattle Repertory Theatre, “Camera Obscura” received its world premiere at London’s Almeida Theatre, both productions helmed by the celebrated English director Jonathan Miller. DeStefano’s directing credits include “Shipment Day”, the 25th anniversary production of William Inge’s
“Natural Affection”, for which he received an L.A. Drama-Logue Award, Horton Foote’s “The One-Armed Man”, the world premiere of “Conversations With The Spanish Lady” by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan, and the world premiere of “Twisted Twain”, a one-man show by Bill Erwin. (www.lorenzodestefano.com)
“Olivia-My Life of Exile in Kalaupapa”, in print since 1988, is now available from
The Audiobook of “Olivia-My Life of Exile in Kalaupapa” now available from
www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/Olivia-Audiobook/B01MXYSFX1
Produced by Lorenzo DeStefano & Benjamin Hamilton Narrated by Deanna Espinas
Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
Release Date: 12-20-16
Publisher: The Estate of Olivia Robello Breitha
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