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SPEAKER 1: OK, guys listen up. Listen up. I go.

ROSEANNE PEREIRA: Excitement mounts backstage before a rehearsal of A Lion's Tale.

SPEAKER 1: Need this preset.

SPEAKER 2: Yes ma'am.

SPEAKER 1: Places, please.

SPEAKER 2: Thanks, Josie.

SPEAKER 3: Thank you, Josie.

SPEAKER 4: Thank you, Josie.

ROSEANNE PEREIRA: The theater is in downtown Saint Paul. But to get here, the story had to travel across continents and mediums. It started as an oral tale, became a book, then a script, and now a performance. One person who helped this transformation is Said Salah Ahmed. He wrote the play. He's a science and Somali language teacher in the Minneapolis schools and has been in teaching for over four decades.

SAID SALAH AHMED: We are in one well-known classroom in Sanford Middle School.

ROSEANNE PEREIRA: Ahmed has graying hair and wears a big tan suit jacket over his small frame. As the school day draws to a close, children come in from the hallways to hug him before they go home. Ahmed teaches many refugees from war-torn countries. In class, his students help one another in whatever language works.

SAID SALAH AHMED: And it goes like that, English, Somali, Arabic, Oromo, Swahili, all those languages spoken in this small room.

ROSEANNE PEREIRA: Ahmed has put what he's seen at school into his play, A Lion's Tale. The play opens with two Somali children, Ali and Asha, attending their first American birthday party. They're shocked when the American twins hosting the party want two presents instead of sharing one. The kids then magically travel to Somalia where folktales about lions teach them about sharing.

Ahmed says to understand the storytelling tradition, you really have to understand the nomadic Somali lifestyle. After a day of taking care of animals, everyone would be exhausted. At night, adults would still be milking animals. To keep the children awake for their dinner, family members would gather around a fire and tell them stories.

SAID SALAH AHMED: So you look at the stars. And when such a star goes into that level, it's the time when you will milk the sheep, or the cattle, or the camel. For the camel, it is the latest. And the evening star should set down. And therefore, children have to wait.

ROSEANNE PEREIRA: The Somali language was not written until 1972. So telling stories also served as an informal education for children.

SAID SALAH AHMED: So adults will talk to them and teach them through these stories, different fables, or even talking about history, or about their families. So that is how we learned.

ROSEANNE PEREIRA: Ahmed says the tradition continues in some of the living rooms of Somali homes in the Twin Cities. Backstage, the kids are as rambunctious as ever.

KID 1: Somali.

KID 2: Can I see this?

KID 3: We're learning a lot of Somali. Good morning.

SAMA ELMI: My name is Sama Elmi. And I play a neighborhood kid, a hyena, and a sheep.

ROSEANNE PEREIRA: In addition to managing three roles in the play, Elmi balances two cultures, Somali and American. She first heard the lion folktales from her grandmother. Elmi grew up in the US, but recognizes the confusion of the Ali and Asha characters at the birthday party. Many of her friends had similar experiences when they arrived in America.

SAMA ELMI: You do feel the conflict in cultures when you come from a different country, especially a war-torn country, and you come to a country that has everything. It is kind of hard actually. But Elmi believes that little by little, newcomers can feel like they fit in and work together on things like, well, plays.

SPEAKER 2: You shouldn't worry too much about birthdays and such, these American traditions like Somali superstitions.

ROSEANNE PEREIRA: Steppingstone Theatre will present A Lion's Tale, Somali Folktales at the Landmark Theater, in Saint Paul, through May 20. I'm Roseanne Pereira, Minnesota Public Radio News.

KIDS: (SINGING) When it's not your birthday. This buck is still on you. When it's not your birthday.