Recognized Artists
Recognizing local and Native Hawaiian artists is at the core of the conservatory’s mission
Students rehearse, create, and train beside professionals in the entertainment industry. The Hawaiʻi Conservatory of Performing Arts highlights working artists to help guide the students on their journey towards a career in the performing arts.
Distinguished Island Artists
The conservatory chooses one or more established island artists, producing a selection of their body of work, and facilitating their creation of new, original work, which our students will present to audiences.
Terri Madden
Terri Madden, MFA (Theatre – Playwriting, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa), is the founder and Executive Director of PlayBuilders of Hawai‘i Theater Company. For more than 14 years, she has written, directed, and produced original, community-based plays that amplify the voices of Hawai‘i’s diverse communities. Her work spans neighborhoods like Wahiawā and Waipahu and identity-based groups including LGBTQ+ individuals, former foster youth, and survivors of domestic violence. Through strategic fundraising and grant writing, she ensures all participants—including community members—are paid for their contributions.
Before founding PlayBuilders, Terri was a top-selling real estate agent and an award-winning actress in community and semi-professional theatre companies. Today, she brings that same drive to creating theatre that matters.
Her credits include Yes, I Am, Leeward Edition, Dragonfly: The Story of a Young Local Girl’s Journey Through Foster Care, and The Super Executive Aunties of the Mālama the Caregivers Collective. She produces every PlayBuilders production developed through story circles and deep community collaboration.
Terri believes theatre is a powerful tool for empathy, equity, and transformation. Through story circles, interviews, and participatory practices, she creates work that not only entertains but strengthens communities and drives social impact.
Kaipo Dudoit
Kaipo Dudoit is a kanaka ʻōiwi actor from Honouliuli, Oʻahu. His latest theatricals work include assistant directing for Rent at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
He has acted in several plays at Kumu Kahua Theatre, UH Mānoa, Hawaiʻi Shakespeare Festival, Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī Coalition, and Palikū Theatre. He has also acted in TV and film projects; recently seen in Disney’s live-action film Lilo & Stitch playing David Kawena. Kaipo is also a proud haumāna of Robert Cazimero in Hālau Nā Kamalei o Līlīlehua.
Emerging Island Artists
Additionally, the conservatory will recognize one or more emerging island artists annually, and connect this innovative and exciting work to the established artist’s legacy of work. The established artist paves the way, the emerging artist invigorates the art with their innovative and exciting takes on the ever-evolving culture and living traditions of performing arts in Hawaiʻi.
Alysia-Leila Kepaa
Alysia-leila Kepa’a (she/her) was last seen in iHula at Palikū Theatre. Her previous credits include, Protocol Z, Oriental Faddah and Son, Demigods Anonymous (Palikū Theatre) and Taming of The Shrew (Hawaii Shakespeare Festival), Folks You Meet in Longs, Wild Meat and Bully Burgers (Kumu Kahua Theatre).
Alysia was recently featured in Las Vegas for the KCACTF Region 8, Festival 55 invited production of Demigods Anonymous. Her training includes classical text and performance with Taurie Kinoshita, voice, movement and acting with Alexander Durrant, stage combat with Dueling Arts International, and Shakespeare in Performance with East 15 Acting School and The Royal Shakespeare Company.
Noa Helelā
A Hawaiian-Asian-European multimedia artist whose work includes filmmaking, playwriting, music, and poetry. A Windward Community College alum, she made her playwriting debut with Demigods Anonymous at Kumu Kahua Theatre in 2018 which will be produced at Palikū Theatre in Fall 2022. Her projects are set in Hawaiʻi and involve fantasy realism and dark humor, with themes including racial identity, racism/racial violence, native issues, diaspora, colonization, feminism, queer relationships, and trans identity.
She is currently creating two TV series: one about neurodivergent people with superpowers, and another about a Hawaiian trans heroine who gains plant-based powers from a GMO experiment. She is also creating a horror-comedy comic book about queer hapa-Asian friends involved in a bizarre string of murders.
Both the established and emerging artists work closely with the cohort of students in training at the Hawaiʻi Conservatory of Performing Arts, leading workshops, symposiums, and serving as mentors to individual students.
Emerging Island Arts Educator
The Emerging Island Arts Educator Initiative amplifies and supports local teaching artists, offering them paying work delivering courses in our Foundation in Acting, along with mentorship by our faculty, as well as the support needed to pursue the credentials and degrees required to thrive in a long-term career as a performing arts educator in the islands.
Kirstyn Trombetta
Kirstyn Trombetta is a local actor, writer, and educator. Her recent and notable stage credits include Kimo the Waiter at Palikū Theatre, Haoleland and #iambadatthis at Kumu Kahua Theatre, Waitress at Diamond Head Theatre, Macbeth and Hedda Gabler with Hawai‘i Shakespeare Festival. She received a Po‘okela award for Featured Female in a Play as Lady Macduff.
Her collaborations with Playbuilders and Leeward Theatre have given her opportunities for her works to be produced. She received a Po‘okela award for her play Saudade in 2017. She has trained under Betty Burdick during her days at Leeward Community College and holds a Bachelor’s in Secondary Education with a concentration in English Language Arts from UH Mānoa. Kirstyn hopes her efforts as a public school educator make a difference in her students’ lives and perhaps ignites the same fire she possesses for all avenues of storytelling in them as well.
Alaka‘i Cunningham
Alaka’i Cunningham was born and raised in Kailua and trained at Windward Community College. He has continued to hone his craft as an actor, appearing in Oriental Faddah and Son, Walking Shadow (Palikū Theatre) She Kills Monsters (Leeward Community College Lab Theater) Gone Feeshing (Kumu Kahua Theater) and Macbeth (Hawaii Shakespeare Festival).
Alaka’i studied abroad in London training at East 15 Acting School and with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Alaka’i is a certified Actor Combatant with Dueling Arts International, trained extensively in all weapon disciplines. Alaka’i was awarded a po’okela for Best Supporting Actor and was invited to perform at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival as part of the cast of Demigods Anonymous.
Distinguished Visiting Artists
We bring the best in international performing arts to Hawaiʻi to engage in exciting cultural and artistic exchange with local artists, as well as inspire and teach our students and connect them to the wider industry. We are fortunate to work closely with The Kennedy Center, East 15 Acting School, the Royal Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Dueling Arts International, and many other national and international partners. Every year, we sponsor one or more visiting artists to work alongside our faculty and island artists. They offer their specialized skills and training to our students through courses, workshops, master classes, and one-on-one mentorship.
Jack Fletcher
Jack Fletcher is one of the top voice directors in the world of animation and video games as well as being an acclaimed casting director and a director of motion capture performance. He directed the fan favorite Final Fantasy games X and X-2 as well as the highly regarded HBO animated series Spawn and MTV’s historic Aeon Flux. Other iconic and popular animation titles he has directed include the most recent Powerpuff Girls series; the recent retro-inspired classic Looney Tunes series for HBO; Cartoon Networks’ Uncle Grandpa, Sonic Boom, and My Gym Partner’s a Monkey series; the critically acclaimed companion piece to The Matrix– Animatrix; Miyazaki’s masterpieces Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Laputa: Castle in the Sky; and the groundbreaking CG feature film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
Trained in acting at Juilliard and in film at NYU, Jack has a strong theater background. He has taught acting for decades and directed for the stage. His numerous stage directing credits include The American Conservatory Theater, PCPA, The Magic Theater, Theaterworks, and most recently, the NYU Tisch Graduate Acting Program.
His teaching credits include the graduate acting program at ACT and the Denver Theater Center, as well the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts where he also served as Conservatory Director. In addition, Jack has taught acting for the camera online with Alex Hurt.
Earl T. Kim
Earl T. Kim is an international actor, creator, storyteller, voiceover/performance capture artist, and movement director based in Los Angeles. He is a multifaceted artist whose career has spanned live and recorded mediums. On stage, he has performed in productions all over the World as part of companies such as (UK) Shakespeares Globe, BBC Radio 3, The Arcola, Battersea Arts Center (Aus), The Queensland Performing Arts Center, Metro Arts, The Adelaide Fringe Festival (USA) Lajolla Playhouse, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival.
His television credits include Shameless, Two Broke Girls, Will and Grace, The OA, and My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Most notably, he portrayed (voiceover/performance capture/model) the warrior monk Norio in the Playstation game Ghost of Tsushima.
Kim holds an MFA in Acting from East 15 Acting School in London (UK) and a BFA in Contemporary Performance from Naropa University in Boulder, CO.