On Friday night when some of Lisa Matsumoto's closest friends were giving interviews on the 6 o'clock news, I wondered how they could speak so calmly and meaningfully about such a shocking loss.

It was probably a lesson they learned from her. They're a close-knit, though very large group, those Lisa Matsumoto people. Legions of actors, dancers, singers, costume-sewers, pot-luck makers and general helpers eagerly signed on for long rehearsals, crowded dressing rooms and uncomfortable costumes just to be a part of her magic, even if it was two minutes of stage time in the second act.

You saw it on their beaming faces during their thunderous finales. They were all so happy to be in a Lisa Matsumoto show. If something went wrong backstage, the audience never saw it. The spell was never broken by the intrusion of a mistake.

Matsumoto's productions were at times breathtaking in their loveliness. The firefly ballet in "On Dragonfly Wings" comes to mind. The floating sparks of light brought a hush over the packed LCC Theatre crowd. Sometimes the shows were raucously silly in the way children get when they cavort unchecked in the backyard. Her seven menehune characters with names like "Wat" "Wea" and "How Come" was a joke that just kept on giving.

Above all, Lisa Matsumoto was brave, and though that may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you recall her sweet and earnest family-friendly work, anyone involved in theater can only admire the challenges she took on and the success she found at each turn.

She didn't rely on a producing theater to stage her work and instead ran her own theatrical company. She wrote plays for huge casts, called for lavish production numbers, intricate costumes and mammoth sets. She counted on large audiences filling the big theaters she rented, and they always came. A Lisa Matsumoto show was always a big, full house.

To sum up her work as a "pidgin plays" is simplistic. Though some of her best-loved productions made use of pidgin dialects for comic effect, she was not limited by colloquial language or stock Island characters. She took on difficult topics and themes that, in anyone else's hands, would be unwatchable musical theater, but with her imagination, became lovely, transformative stage plays.

She trusted her audience's intelligence. She remembered how to see the world through the eyes of a child.

Some people dream big but never try. Some people try, but give up when the first play doesn't make it directly to Broadway. Matsumoto had it all: creativity, work ethic, talent and faith. There are no words to sum up what a huge loss this is for so many people. If there are, she took them with her.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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