magic maker

CIRA de CASTILLO TGI Staff Writer

PO’IPU — In the grand room of his South Side home sits Arnold Meister. Dream

weaver.

Since arriving on Kaua’i in 1969, Meister has worked his magic on

young people and adults encouraging their creative instincts to take hold and

bloom.

As the director of the Kaua’i Performing Arts Center (KPAC), he has

helped unleash and showcase the talents of thousands of youngsters, and as a

charter member of the Kaua’i Community Players, he has been a major force

behind bringing theater to the island. We all thank him for that.

Meister,

60, is one of those rare, talented artists who recognized his calling early.

“I was meant to be a teacher,” he said. “The things I have done as a

teacher will go way beyond my life. It’s a legacy and it’s ever expanding. I

know that so many of the kids I taught will go on to influence other

people.”

Reflecting, Meister said he could have built a successful career

on stage.

“But fame is a cruel master,” said the man with the Cheshire cat

smile. “Many performers who have made it, so often after their bloom has

passed, don’t follow up with something. That was it. Maybe that would have

happen to me. I may have had a dozen years on top and then 30 years of someone

who was…”

Meister retired this year from his job as a performing arts

teacher for the Department of Education. He taught for more than 38 years in

Kaua’i’s public schools.

This past year has been a time of closure for the

multi-talented performer, director and teacher.

He says he took his last

curtain call as Scrooge in the recent Kaua’i Community Players production and

the Little Shop of Horrors, the last Kaua’i Performing Arts Academy show, was

his swan song as a director, producer and educator.

“Ending it was easy,”

he said.

“One of the joys I have had is I spent a lot of time training

the new director, who is wonderful, Mary McDermott. She’s a good artist and a

good student and a good person. I’m just able to hand over not just the job,

but the legacy to her. I feel very good about that, and that helped with the

closure.”

Meister found his way to Kaua’i after a brief stint on Lanai

where he taught at the high school and started a band program.

“Kaua’i just

embraced me,” Meister said. “Whatever spirit is here just wrapped it’s arms

around me and never let go. It’s no accident that I am on Kaua’i, it has

nurtured my spirit in such a way that I could give my all.”

Meister began

his teaching career in a prestigious school district in San Antonio, Texas in

the early 60s.

“I had a good job. I was singing in the San Antonio Grand

Opera. I had a nice car, a nice house—and I remember thinking at the time,

“This has all come to me too fast, it’s all too comfortable. This is like a

dream. I am going to wake up. I will be 60 years old, and I will still be in

this house in this job doing these things. I want to get out and see the

word.”

In 1965 he was offered a position in Lanai.

Acting on a

philosophy that his mother instilled in him, to take an opportunity because you

may not have it again,

Meister decided to accept the offer.

Meister

would spend four years at Lanai High School and in 1969 he accepted a position

with the Kaua’i school district.

On Kaua’i, he began his career with the

DOE teaching gifted and talented students at the Koloa Elementary School.

“I wasn’t teaching the arts but I was very active with the KCP,” Meister

said. “That summer I directed “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” I had

played the leading role in that, Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd, in Honolulu.

“I

remember one day late in the run, I saw a whole bunch of people from the

Department of Education there. I was very flattered that they came to see my

show. I greeted them and that was that,” he said.

“Just before the school

year started I got a call from Dr. Nakashima, who was the district

superintendent at the time. They wanted me to start the Learning Center in the

Performing Arts. I realized then that they had come to see the show to see my

work. I am sure they had me in mind even before they saw the show.”

Meister said Nakashima told him that if he wasn’t interested in running

the learning center, it wouldn’t be started at all.

“It was obvious this

was a project they wanted me to do and felt that I could do it. I felt very

honored. That was the start of KPAC.”

As director of the schools’

performing arts center, Meister would often work with his students over a

period of time, sometimes for four, five or six years.

“When you work with

an artist that long there is a relationship that develops that is forever. They

get into your fabric and they get into yours. I have students all over the

planet. As I remember the teachers that have touched my life, I know they will

remember,” he said.

As a child, Meister dreamed of becoming a performer,

but his rational mind, the influence of his parents, convinced him that show

business may be too far out of the range of possibility.

“It was a

different era than now and you just thought that going into the arts was a

frivolous thing,” he said. His musical talent showed up at an early age.

Growing up on a farm in Texas, he was drawn to the family piano.

“Standing, I was eye level with the keys and would reach up and play. My mother

said I played tunes. I don’t really remember it. I do remember liking the piano

and the look of the keyboard.”

He began to study voice in his teens. In

high school, he sang in the choir, played in the band, was on the football team

and performed in plays.

My first major role in a standard musical was my

freshman year at college,” he said. “I was Curly in Oklahoma. I was in heaven.

I also fell in love with the girl who played Lori. It was one of those magic

times. Your playing the boyfriend of the girl you’re in love with.”

He also

toured Texas with a group called the Velvetones, and played Lun Tha in The King

and I.

“The song that I have each of my students learn is There is no

business like show business, he said. “It has the philosophy that even when

you are broken-hearted you go on. There is nothing that happens to you in life

that has to stop you. You just go on. You just don’t let it stop you.”

“You have opening night and there you are—next day on your dressing room

they have hung a star” he sings. “You know you just go on and do what you do,

no matter what is going to happen you will be OK.”

Last year, Meister was

diagnosed with cancer.

High dosage radiation treatments did their job and

today, he refers to himself as a cancer survivor.

“When I was first

diagnosed,” he said, “I tried to hide it because I didn’t want people to have

to bear that knowledge. I always felt self-contained; I didn’t realized how I

was loved.

“This year I realized how integrated we are with each other. I

didn’t know that as well a year ago as I do now.”

Meister said he has

learned a lot in the past year. “The love of family and friends is very

powerful. I discovered that while cancer is no fun it’s not a terrifying thing.

I’ve discovered that I loved my teaching career, I was meant to do that, but I

can bring it to a close.”

Meister said he feels very well. “It seems that

when my body is most frail that my spirit is strongest. I am learning more and

more of the spirit.”

From that perspective, he is defining life in new

ways.

“I want to swim in the ocean. I love the ocean, it’s a healing

place. I want to work in my garden, touch the earth.

“I want to sit with a

book and read as long as I feel like reading. Get up in the morning with a cup

of coffee and read.”

Reading After the Ball and Conversations with Billy

Wilder, Mister says he has something inside that wants to come out. “I may

write and paint,” he adds.

He is planning to go to New York with friends

this Spring where he will go to the Met and see the Wagner Ring, a lifetime

experience for the Opera aficionado. Then it will be on to Texas and a visit

with family and friends. As human beings, Meister said, the greatest test is to

expand awareness.

“Everything that happens to you, good or bad, can expand

your awareness and all expansion is good,” he said. “There are things that are

very sad to know, but I don’t think we should pull back from knowing anything.”

Bravo!