The son of a Samoan mother and an American father, Kneubuhl's multicultural heritage produced a distinctive artistic vision that formed the basis of his most powerful dramatic work.
[1] An accomplished playwright, Kneubuhl "was a bicultural Polynesian who used the medium of theater to explore identity, loneliness and the craft required to bring them to the stage".
[11][13] Returning to Hawaii in the mid-1940s, Kneubuhl won acclaim as a playwright with the Honolulu Community Theater, staging a play spoken in Hawaiian Pidgin English (The City is Haunted, 1947).
[13] Kneubuhl was also part of the theater's 1948 version of Harry Brown's A Sound of Hunting adapted to include the heroic role played by the 442nd Infantry Regiment of enlisted nisei, received with great fervor by the Japanese-American community.
In 2022, Kneubuhl was featured in Naomi Hirahara's anthology We Are Here: 30 Inspiring Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Who Have Shaped the United States that was published by the Smithsonian Institution and Running Press Kids.
Events unfold to a dramatic climax with the shooting in Apia of Samoa's leader, Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III, a distant relative of Luisa, by the New Zealand constabulary.
The cast included Lani Tupu as The Writer, Jay Laga'aia as Lilo, Martyn Sanderson as the Brother Patrick and John Callen as Frank.
The cast included acclaimed New Zealand actor Martyn Sanderson, the director of the film Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree based on the novel by Samoan writer Albert Wendt.