Several years ago, Shawn Shafner co-directed a play about Jonah in which live beluga whales were used on stage. Yes, beluga whales. Thankfully in tanks.

Which were thankfully in the world's largest aquarium in Georgia.

The show, alas, did tank, in the negative sense, due to technical difficulties beyond everyone's control (don't ask).

These days, Shafner is playing a tasty component of the whale food chain, the penguin.

Well, not the beluga whale's chain, which is linked to smaller menu fare like crabs and shrimp ('twas killer whales that chowed down on the cast of "March of the Penguins").

Still, there's a crazy kind of symmetry going on here for the young actor who graduated four years ago from New York University's Tisch School for Arts, where whale-directing and penguin-playing are not on the syllabus.

As the star of "The Backyardigans Live! Tale of the Mighty Knights," coming to Bloomington's U.S. Cellular Coliseum today for two performances (4 and 7 p.m.), Shafner takes it all in stride.

Even to the point of invoking terms like "Brechtian" to explain the gig.

He admits that the show's press agent has warned them he might be asking for trouble calling "The Backyardigans Live!" something as foreboding as "Brechtian" (the term used to characterize German playwright Bertolt Brecht's self-reflexive theater techniques).

After all, isn't this just a simple live-action rendition of the computer-animated Nick Jr. TV series about a penguin named Pablo, an orange moose named Tyrone, a pink something-or-other called Uniqua, a purple Kangaroo named Austin and a baby hippo named Tasha?

And aren't they all aimed at kids from around 2 to 10?

Yes, and yes again.

But Brechtian they still are, avers Shafner, whose theater roots extended back to a kindergarten stint playing one of the "King and I" tots in a local dinner theater production in the Denver area.

It has something to do with an actor playing a penguin who, in fact, is more of an anthropomorphic commentary on a penguin than a penguin proper (human faces are allowed to assert themselves clearly through the layers of felt-and-foam).

It also has something to do with the fact that the live "Backyardigans" is something of an interactive theatrical meditation on the canned "Backyardigans" that kids watch at home.

"When parents and kids watch it on TV at home, it's in front of them," says Shafner. "Here, it's a theatrical experience all around you - a show where you can literally hear the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd. It kind of 'bursts' in a way that TV doesn't, and you the feel the energy of a real person in front of you, with a lot of cool stage magic."

Through it all, "the audience, in effect, becomes another character."

Brechtian or no, "The Backyardigans Live! Tale of the Mighty Knights" is something of a toddler itself, having premiered only a month or so ago.

The TV series itself was hatched back in 2004, airing on CBS two years before being added to the Nick Jr. slate in 2006.

An average episode involves the ways five preschool cronies (the ones mentioned above) manage to use their imaginations to heighten the experience and appearance of an otherwise ordinary backyard.

Songs and adventures ensue.

And Pablo the penguin is prone to panic attacks when the going gets tense.

In the touring show's "Tale of the Mighty Knights," the source is the recent TV special of the same name, in which the Backyardigans' imaginations conjure up a tale in which Shafner's Pablo is crowned King Pablo, with a pair of errant knights in Uniqua and Tyrone. The knights embark on a quest to protect King Pablo's "unpredictable egg."

How unpredictable?

Shafner says the giant egg featured in the stage version is a technical challenge in which the actor inside can't see outside the shell as the menagerie of foam-and-flannel Backyardigans orbit around it.

Throw in an arena-full of screaming kids who are practically begged to become interactively involved in the show by talking back to the stage and more.

As a result, a live human actor can become a little discombobulated.

"This (acting) job is about hitting your marks," laughs Shafner. "And having a sense of humor. There aren't any deep themes or meanings here. It isn't going to change anybody's life. But that doesn't mean it isn't going to affect some kid seeing their first live show."

That's a potential impact Shafner says none of the cast takes lightly.

If nothing else, he adds, playing a 6-foot-tall blue penguin prone to panic attacks sure beats trying to direct a live actor opposite a tank of beluga whales.

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At a glance

What: "The Backyardigans Live! Tale of the Mighty Knights"

When: 4 and 7 p.m. today

Where: U.S. Cellular Coliseum, 101 S. Madison St., Bloomington

Tickets: $13.50 to $36.50

Box office number: (866) 891-9992