Artist at play

"Northern Lights/Southern Cross: Tales From the Other Side of the World" is making its enchanting American debut at the Guthrie Theater's Dowling Studio.

This family-friendly collaboration between Minneapolis' Interact Theater and the Tutti Ensemble of Adelaide, Australia, first premiered in Adelaide in 2007 after artists from each group researched their respective indigenous traditions. Both groups hold artists with disabilities as central to their work.

"Northern Lights/Southern Cross" is a series of tales that deftly combine the talents of those with and without disabilities.

Indigenous traditions are a healing force for the protagonist, Oki, played with winning charm by Kevin Kling, who also wrote the script. Kling/Oki recounts his 2001 motorcycle accident and the delirium afterward, when his survival was uncertain. Subconscious and collective unconscious thought forms storm his psyche and spill onto the stage.

Pat Rix's celestial music, directed by Aaron Gabriel, permeates throughout like a balm that exorcises pain, not only within Oki, but from the world itself.

Native American traditions of sacred drumming, played with commanding gravity by Alvin Baker, and ritual dance, vibrantly performed by Larry Yazzie, contrast with Australia's aboriginal wooden wind instrument, the didgeridoo, played by Jamie Goldsmith.

Steve Goldsmith plays Tanda, a seer of sorts, with pleasing directness, unembellished with pretense.

Clowns endearingly enact Oki's imagined funeral. Director Jeanne Calvit -- who, with Rix, originated the concept -- integrates walkers and wheelchairs into flowing formations. The focus sometimes shifts to elegant Colette Illarde, decked in black, pushing 93-year-old Mary Majesta Thomas as Crow -- healing spirits on a mission.

Two lovely solos portray Oki's deepest loves. Catherine Campbell, as his wife, shines with "Claire's Song." Meredith Casey, as his daughter, Amy, reveals her fear of loss in the beautifully vulnerable "The Daughter's Song."

The Tutti Ensemble is renowned for choral music. This staging adds stirring vocals by members of Robert Robinson's Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir to enhance the splendid Tutti-Interact choir.

Brad Dahlgaard's set and Halle O'Falvey's and Kristi Ternes' costumes evoke the layered sandstone formations of Australia's Outback. Karin Olson's lighting celebrates Australia's Southern Cross constellation and Minnesota's Northern Lights.

John Townsend is a Minneapolis writer.