For the past five years the Breaking Wave Theatre Company, based in Guam, has created spaces for local storytellers to imagine, create, and express themselves. The team behind BWTC has platformed Indigenous stories on stage and online using old media and new. This week they’ll celebrate five years of spreading art across Guam with — what else? A production. 

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To review a timeline of BWTC productions is to see an organization sprout onto the scene, plant its roots, and bloom. Over the years, BWTC has worked on growing that root system and diving within, that is, leaning into the stories that can only come from Guam. There are wonderful, popular works that have captured the hearts of millions of people, definitely. But there are also stories and plays and musicals and poems whose sounds and rhythms and stanzas resonate like no other in the DNA of people of the Pacific. 

To support this work, BWTC is hosting a gala and tickets are on sale now, with ticket sales ending Wednesday, Dec. 6. Attendees will be treated to a buffet dinner and performances Dec. 9. And in true theater kid fashion, the BWTC crew produced an original murder mystery show for gala-goers. Also, in true only-on-Guam fashion, there will be raffle prizes to be won and games to be played. 

More importantly, the proceeds of the gala will go toward continuing the theater company’s mission and supporting its upcoming projects.

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A Midwinter Night’s Gala

Buy tickets online here: https://tickets.guamtime.net/event/bwtc-a-midwinter-nights-gala.

BWTC’S A Midwinter Night’s Gala will be this Saturday, Dec. 9 at the Rihga Royal Laguna Guam Resort. The fun begins at 6 p.m. 

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In life, there are fewer things more valuable than art. When our ancestors had figured out ways to successfully navigate the ocean on vessels handcrafted from coconut trees and settled on cultural practices so they’d all get along on a dot of land in the vast sea, they still made time for art. For storytelling. For dance. For performance. For creativity.

BWTC, in the past five years, has worked to make the creative dreams of Indigenous performers a reality. They’ve presented its CHamoru Play Festival and a youth summer theater camp, ensuring there’s a next generation of Indigenous theater kids who have a space to follow their curiosities. In October, they produced “Hita Mane’estoria: We Are Storytellers,” an original play by CHamoru writers based on the memories shared by their elders. They also worked with Humanities Guåhan and TeAda Productions to bring “Masters of the Currents,” a play about Micronesians who face conflicts in Hawaii, to Guam. The organization’s “Unspoken; A Mental Health Anthology” series dove into the topic of mental health and created a space to share about a subject that many local families rarely address.

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Vice President James Aevermann said in a news release that the Breaking Wave Theatre Company started as a small group of theater-makers with a dream to do theater full-time and offer an interesting production perhaps once a year. The organization has only grown. They now offer workshops and multiple shows each year.

“I can't count the number of times that I've spoken to audience members who expressed that it was the first time they've felt seen, that they could see themselves or their family members on stage, that the stories were so relatable,” Aevermann said. “The real power of the arts is in the ability to affect change in society, to be able to be a mirror held up to a community and say: This is what you are. Your stories matter.”

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Support Breaking Wave Theatre Company 

For those who want to support the company beyond the gala or who may have missed the opportunity to attend, consider donating your time or money. For those who have ideas for plays, the Breaking Wave Theatre Company is open to pitches. Find more information here: https://www.bwtcguam.com/get-involved. ✶