Kennedy Theatre (University of Hawaii at Mānoa)

Congress set up the East-West Center in 1960 to build ties across Asia and the Pacific, and Pei was commissioned to design a group of buildings for it on the University of Hawaii's Mānoa campus. The theatre, Jefferson Hall and the Hale Mānoa residence, built in 1962 and 1963, are the three he worked on. They grew out of a partnership: the New York firm I. M. Pei & Associates handled most of the design, and McAuliffe Young & Associates, based in Honolulu, administered the project. For the theatre, the architects chiefly shaped the shell, while the university's drama department had a strong say in the size and detailing of the interior. In 1963 the three buildings won a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.

The theatre began as a joint venture of the university and the center; the university took sole charge of it after the East-West Center was incorporated in 1975. Finished in 1962, it was first called the East-West Center Theater. On 27 November 1963, five days after President Kennedy was assassinated and a week before the official opening, the university's Board of Regents met in special session and renamed it the John F. Kennedy Theater.

The two-storey theatre is T-shaped in plan. On each side of the main hall, six large square columns hold up a single girder with cantilevered ends; these girders in turn carry the roof, itself cantilevered, built of 88-foot (about 27 m) T-section members and reinforced concrete. The walls are scored concrete, reinforced and cast in place. The lobby stairs show on the outside as two half-round projections. On the main front, a large upper balcony with open-grill precast concrete railings shelters the outdoor entrance lobby. The fly tower rises a further 38 feet (about 11.6 m) above the roof.

The theatre and Jefferson Hall face each other symmetrically across East-West Road and a broad plaza. They share cornice lines, fascias and the handling of beams and columns; their formal placing, deeply cantilevered roofs and heavy beams and columns give them a monumental bearing. All three of Pei's buildings on the campus are of painted exposed reinforced concrete.

In 1999 the theatre's interior had a coffered concrete ceiling and walls lined with Burmese teak; the hall was designed for both Western and Eastern stagings: three motorized wagon stages, four side stages with vertical louvres that open or close, a proscenium 50 by 25 feet (about 15 by 7.6 m) adjustable by six sliding teak panels, and an adapted hanamichi, the Kabuki walkway running from the stage into the audience. The main stage seats 619; the Earle Ernst Lab Theatre, a flexible black box, seats 147.

The theatre is tied to teaching: students of the Department of Theatre & Dance create, rehearse, design, perform and manage the productions there.

The theatre welcomes the public to the department's performances, with its own box office. It stands at 1770 East-West Road, on the Mānoa campus, facing Jefferson Hall.