"According to Coyote": Trickster tales at Seattle Children's Theatre

Pity poor Coyote. Sent to Earth to eliminate people-eating monsters and prepare for the arrival of human beings, he goes at the formidable task less like a superhero than a big goof.

Coyote deals with fire and ghosts and the stars. While he ultimately creates many indigenous people from his victories, he also annoys everybody, gets fooled easily and doesn't take directions very well. A mythological trickster who appears in Plains and Plateau Indian lore in the American West, Coyote is the subject of John Kauffman's "According to Coyote," a one-act show grandly staged in a new Seattle Children's Theatre production.

The late Kauffman served as artistic director for Honolulu Theatre for Youth, attended the University of Washington and did some directing in Seattle. He based "Coyote," a drama-comedy that premiered in 1987 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, on stories he heard from Nez Percé family members in Washington and Idaho.

Kauffman performed the show and toured it across the U.S.; his sister, Carlotta, took up the role following his death in 1990. Now Gene Tagaban, a charismatic, entertaining storyteller, proves a graceful narrator-actor in director Sheila Daniels' remount of the one-man play.

Tagaban poises himself on a rather magical set that looks like a giant drum beneath a sea of stars and a pair of magnificent wings. Dressed in street clothes, he gradually dons the accouterments of a traditional-looking, Native American costume. Along the way, he unfolds a number of vignettes about Coyote's misadventures, animating his performance with dancing, drumming, singing and broad gestures that remind us we're talking about the world's creation.

Tagaban tells us how Coyote's love for a star results in his accidental creation of Crater Lake, and how Rabbit tricks him repeatedly into thinking he's going to enjoy a chicken dinner.

The most poignant tale is of the death of Coyote's wife, which leads to a typical episode of his impulsiveness.

When all is said and done, Coyote comes across as a lovable nut who definitely deserves a better fate than the one he gets. But as the subject of SCT's winning show, he could not be more captivating in his noble foolishness.

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com.