reiko ho
recent projects.
current & upcoming projects.
• August 2024: Lovey Lee (Kumu Kahua Theatre) -Director
• September 2024: The Great Race (HTY)- 2024 NEA Grant Recipient, Playwright/Director
• January 2025: Musubi Man (HTY) - Director
• February 2025: Secret Warriors (History Theatre, Minneapolis)- Pidgin Dialect Coach
• March 2025: Too Many Mangos (HTY) - World Premiere, Director
• May 2025: Kimʻs Convenience (MVT)- Hawaiʻi Premiere, Director
• August 2025: Tales of the Sun and Moon (HTY) World Premiere, Playwright/Director
• January 2026: The Great Race (HTY)- National Tour, Playwright/ Director
• February 2026: Kim's Convenience (Studio Theatre Tierra Del Sol) - Fight Director
• March 2026: Hawaiʻi Storytellers (Civil Beat)- Storyteller Director/Coach
• May 2026: Yellow Face (MVT)- Hawaiʻi Premiere, Director
• June 2026: The Great Race (TheatreIII, Massachusetts) - Playwright
• September 2026: Our Okinawan ʻOhana (Playbuilders)- World Premiere, Director
• January 2027: Tales of the Sun and Moon (HTY) - National Tour, Playwright/ Director
• February 2027: Tea (Hawaiʻi Opera Theatre)- Premiere, Director
about.
Reiko Ho is a celebrated director, playwright, and multi-disciplinary theatre maker from Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, who loves telling stories that reflect the diverse voices of her island home. Her work has been seen throughout Hawaiʻi as well as nationally.
Directorial projects in 2026 include a national tour for The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac which she also wrote, commissioned by Honolulu Theatre for Youth (HTY). Notably, The Great Race was a 2024 recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She will direct Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang for Manoa Valley Theatre and Our Okinawan Ohana by Lee Tonouchi for Playbuilders. Tales of the Sun and Moon (HTY) that she wrote and directed will run locally, then tour nationally during the Spring of 2027.
Reiko is Artistic Associate for HTY, an Invited Artist at the National Institute of Directing and Ensemble Creation, a member of The Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists, a member of The Playwright’s Center, and serves on the Board of Directors of TYA/USA, the leading national organization for the field of Theatre for Young Audiences.
aloha
My name is Reiko.
Iʻm a theater maker, a mom, a martial arts sensei, and slightly obsessed with Japanese milk bread recipes. Mostly, Iʻm just a human who loves to make sense of the world by telling stories through my Hawaiʻi born, multi-ethnic lens.
My great grandparents on both the Japanese and Chinese sides of my family arrived in Hawaiʻi in the early 1900s to work on the sugar cane plantations along side Hawaiian, Filipino, Korean, and Portuguese laborers.
I identify as Japanese and Chinese and am very proud of my Asian heritage.I love creating theater that reflects the diverse voices of my 'ohana and the community in Hawaiʻi. I love Pidgin, the language that developed as a method of communication on the plantations, and I love to see representation of these voices and faces onstage and on my production teams.
I believe theatre should reveal, should embrace, should be the start of important conversations.
I grapple with generational, systemic trauma and the constant code switching which is part of daily life. Lately, Iʻve been reflecting on how we sometimes erase ourselves, and I think about what it means to be considered “other.” I am not “Hawaiian.” I am not Japanese from Japan. I am not Chinese from China. I am never considered "White" although there is a little French in the mix on my Chinese side. When I am on the Continent, the mainland US, I am asked where I am “really from.”
Growing up in Hawaiʻi has taught me to focus on what is in my heart-- my heart that is all of these things.
I live in the space between many places and cultures.
It is from this space that I make theater.
