TYKE DREAMS OF PLUMERIA STARS
by Kemuel DeMoville
Tyke Dreams of Plumeria Stars draws from the haunting true story of Tyke, the circus elephant who in 1994 killed her trainer and ran through the streets of Honolulu, and filters that trauma through a lens of memory, myth, and cultural dislocation. Fractured and poetic, the play follows a Brother and Sister who were witnesses to the rampage and who remember the trauma like children remembering a monster. Now grown, the Brother cares for a Bound Man who is kept alive by machines and hate; the Sister, a soldier who has recently returned home, tries to reconcile love and loyalty with the echoes of war. Their world is punctuated by ghostly memories and inherited violence, mirrored in a narrative structure that splinters like a dream. Tyke Dreams of Plumeria Stars resists conventional storytelling, offering instead a theatrical elegy for broken families and histories that refuse to stay buried. The play is an exploration of violence, identity, and the ghosts we feel like we carry in our blood.
- Cast Size: 2M 2W 2-5 Any
- Running Time: 90+ minutes
- Royalty Rate: $75 per performance
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About the Playwright
Kemuel DeMoville is an award-winning playwright whose work has been produced somewhere in the world every year since 2005. Recently his work was produced in Hungary, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Israel, and all over the USA. Various plays he has written were the recipients of the Residents Prize, and Hawaii Prize from Kumu Kahua Theatre. He was awarded the Milken Prize for Playwriting in 2017. He is an Aurand Harris Fellow by designation of the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America. Kemuel has an MFA in playwriting from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and his MA in syncretic theatre is from Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand. His work has been published in part by Next Stage Press, YouthPLAYS, Heuer Publishing, The Kenyon Review, Cirque, Spider Magazine and is included in 222 MORE Comedy Monologues, an anthology from Smith and Kraus Publishers
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