Created as a gift for his son, The Story of Everything (TSOE) is former Hawai‘i Poet Laureate Kealoha’s way of exploring humanity’s rich and diverse explanations for the origins of life. Kealoha, a founder of the famed Hawai‘i Slam and an MIT nuclear physics graduate, says that, “The Story of Everything is my most important work and is the culmination of everything that I have learned throughout life. It took me half of my life to study the science behind this piece, half of my life to study the art of poetry and storytelling, and then about half a decade to actually create TSOE.”
TSOE took root in Kealoha’s mind in 2011 when he first learned that he was going to be a father. Kealoha started thinking about all the knowledge he had acquired throughout his life and how he could pass it on to his child, and to other children. What would be the best, most compelling way tell his son about the beginning of all life and existence, making the poetic and scientific details interesting and easy to understand?
“I don’t subscribe to any particular religion,” Kealoha says. “The thing I subscribe to is science.” The poet/physicist strongly believes that science and art and indigenous culture don’t have to be at odds with each other. “The Hawaiian creation chant, the Kumulipo, reads like evolution theory,” he says. “So many Native Hawaiian stories are based on the science of what people observed around them.”
In late 2014, Kealoha received support through the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Pilot Community Inspiration Program, partially funded by Engaging the Senses Foundation, to produce an hour-long performance piece designed to help youth understand “where we come from,” using musicians, performers, and visual artists. This platform gave Kealoha the ability to bring the piece written for his son fully into form.
The project grew in scope and ambition from there. Kealoha premiered an expanded production of the theater piece as part of the 2017 National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California. Engaging the Senses Foundation team members sponsored and attended the performance at the Marin County Civic Center.
After viewing the Bioneers performance, Engaging the Senses Foundation committed time and resources to producing and directing a feature-length film of The Story of Everything. In 2018, ETSF filmed the cast in a studio soundstage at Smashbox in Los Angeles, California. In 2019, ETSF produced and filmed a theater performance at the Hawai‘i Theatre Center in 2019, to a sold out audience. To complete film production, ETSF added special effects and filmed on location on the islands of Kaua‘i and O‘ahu. The non-profit feature-length film was completed in January 2022 and has won multiple awards world-wide in showings since then.
In 2026, Kealoha and ETSF created a series version of The Story of Everything, with Auli‘i Cravalho, star of the animated version of the movie Moana, acting as guide and narrator.
In an era when we face both the knowledge that the historical and present-day injustices of systemic racism consistently expose people of color to reduced quality of life, and that the world itself is in peril due to climate change, a project focused on light, on solutions, and on the transmission of hope is a cause for celebration.
