"Protest!" — UH Reading Hour

The University of Hawaii’s Reading Hour series — in its 20th year in 1969 — presented oral interpretation performances across the academic year, drawing performers “from speech, from English, from drama, and other areas.” The February 27 Honolulu Advertiser feature on the series, written by entertainment writer Wayne Harada, listed the remaining programs for the year. Among them: “March 19 and 20 — ‘Protest!,’ a group reading directed by Lauren Ekroth.”

The format — oral interpretation, performed through voice and body without costumes or set — was one Ekroth had trained in since his undergraduate years at Superior State College. He had already participated in the Reading Hour series the previous year: in February 1968, just seven weeks after his PhD was conferred, he performed alongside speech department colleagues in “O, Say, Can You See,” a patriotic American literature program directed by Dr. Huber Ellingsworth. Now, thirteen months later, the content was different: a group reading titled “Protest!” — material he had earned the right to direct, having been among the 158 people arrested in the Bachman Hall sit-in ten months earlier. The return to performance after a fourteen-year gap since his Superior State theater years brought together the performer and the activist in a single public act.

The series was chaired by Mrs. Lucille Breneman, associate professor of speech — a colleague in what the article identifies as UH’s department of speech and communication. The department’s Reading Hour had been founded by the late Joseph F. Smith, a former speech department chairman. That Ekroth was invited to direct a program in this established series less than two years after joining the faculty speaks to how quickly he had become a central figure in the department.