THE STORY
Prince, 20 (future Kamehameha the Great), after an isolated upbringing starts to enjoy life and lust
Male, 20 a cocky mischief-maker, he and Kam become aikanes (buddies with benefits)
Non-binary / trans woman, who the gods select to narrate the story
Prince, 20 (future Kamehameha the Great), after an isolated upbringing starts to enjoy life and lust
Rule Of Fire: A New Musical In Old Hawaii is a cocky queer concoction of history, myth and fantasy that tells the story of Kamehameha the Great, who is a young prince when his remote island makes its first contact with the outside world. There are two primary storylines: the hero’s aikane relationship with Wiki (male friendship including sex, common in the culture then) and his fateful encounter with the aging Captain Cook.
This innovative musical has the potential to attract a large LGBT plus mainstream audience on both stage and screen, with major international appeal. Among its singular features, it is the first musical with a gay or bi historic hero and aikane friendship; the first to portray Captain Cook’s legendary life and death; and the first to celebrate Hawaii’s iconic music, dance, design and allure. The show has an inventive narrative style, distinctive tropical-swing score, spectacular theatrical thrills, and is very scalable with a cast of 13-25 and a large or small island-style band.
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THE MUSIC
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CREATIVE TEAM
DAVID SECTER
BOOK AND LYRICS
RUBEN ESTEVEZ
MUSIC
David Secter is an award-winning writer/producer/director of film, theater and television. He lives in Kona on the big island of Hawaii, where he has completed the book and lyrics for Rule of Fire, A New Musical In Old Hawaii. Secter’s movie Winter Kept Us Warm was the first Canadian feature selected for the Cannes Film Festival and is included in the book series Queer Film Classics from McGill-Queens University Press. His movie The Offering was nominated as Canada’s Best Picture of the Year and distributed by Columbia Pictures. Additional film credits include the comedy Getting Together, released by Troma as Feelin’ Up; Take the Flame! a Gay Games documentary narrated by Greg Louganis; Pacific Passions about the Festival of Pacific Arts; BURN on the Burning Man festival; and CyberDorm, a campus comedy about early webcasts.
During ten years as CEO of EnterMedia, a Manhattan arts center in a historic 1100 seat playhouse, he produced and presented Obie-award winning plays and launched such long-running Broadway musical hits as The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Secter wrote the book and lyrics and produced the celebrated Off-Broadway musical Get Thee to Canterbury and created Banjos and Bugles, a civil war docudramusical. A lifetime member of The Dramatists Guild, he is the subject of The Best of Secter and The Rest of Secter, an award-winning doc on YouTube.
At the early age of five, Ruben Estevez began playing the piano and writing poetry in his hometown of Houston, Texas. As he got older, his love for creative storytelling continued to evolve; and in 1995, Ruben decided to move to Nashville to pursue his passion for songwriting. He landed a publishing deal with Word Records, followed by a string of Contemporary Christian Music cuts. In the Country Music genre, Ruben won the Grand Prize in The Music City Songwriter competition with his song "Lie." In the summer of 2013, "Lie" was cut by Tracy Lawrence on his "Headlights, Taillights and Radios" album and became his third single in late February 2014.
In early 2019, after an inspirational trip to New York City, Ruben put pen to paper in a different form. He decided to write an entire musical based on his personal experiences growing up in the 70s and 80s in Texas, as a closeted gay man in an extremely homophobic culture. One year later, he completed this work, titled Marcos, writing not only the music and lyrics of all the songs, but also the fictional libretto itself. Shortly after Marcos was finished, he began working on another fictional project about a young woman looking for a fresh start in a new town, HAUNT. He recently completed creating the score for the original musical Plane Jane.
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