Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Troupe Seeks to Teach and Entertain With Tribal Legends : Schools: Theater-in- education group acts out stories from North, Central and South America.

The Earth was created by the Moon when he got tired of having no place to put his feet, an accomplishment his family considered much more successful than his effort to turn himself into cheese.

Or so students at Sierra Vista Junior High School were told Monday.

More than 400 seventh-grade students packed into the school’s auditorium to watch two performances of “Indian Legends of the Americas” by the L.A. Troupe, a theater-in-education group. Any youth expecting to see dancing men clad in feathers got a surprise as a cast of four Native Americans in modern garb acted out several legends from tribes in North, Central and South America.

“It was funny,” said Brett Brunsell, 12, one of numerous students who said the 45-minute performance was more entertainment than education. “There weren’t a lot of people running around in circles.”

But Cheryl Mahar, one of two women in the production, said such perceptions make the show more successful at all levels.

“It’s amazing how much they do learn from it because they’re attentive,” she said.

The Native American show is the first such production by the 7-year-old Burbank theater group, which specializes in performances of classic works such as Shakespeare’s, said Koni McCurdy, one of two partners in the group. The group has performed more than 150 productions this year at schools throughout Southern California.

McCurdy said she wrote the play at the request of teachers at schools that book the group for performances. She said she read about 40 books and studied various other materials to develop the script.

“The body of literature is so large that to hone it down to seven or eight legends is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” she said.

The performance was simple, and the only props were a box painted with branches and posters describing each story. Some humorous lines drew chuckles, but some Keystone Kops-type stage maneuvers harvested the biggest laughs.

About 50 honor students gathered after the two performances for a workshop with McCurdy in which they brainstormed and acted out their own “legend”--that of a giraffe-lion creature who ate the village chief because the chief smelled bad, thereby explaining why people bathe.

McCurdy said the tale was about what she expected from the student group, but the exercise serves to remind them of the way Native American legends were born and the cultural purposes they serve.

“These are really the libraries of the Native American people,” she said.