One March morning in 1955, a 15-year-old black girl sitting in the middle of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., refused to give up her seat to a white man. She was arrested and taken away. Her name was not Rosa Parks, but Claudette Colvin. Several months later, Parks followed Colvin's example, making Civil Rights history. Now, 50 years later, the story of Claudette Colvin is being seen and heard throughout the United States. It's at the heart of the one-woman performance "Rage is Not a 1-Day Thing!" to be presented at UNH's Johnson Theatre this weekend by storyteller, playwright and social activist Awele Makeba.

Using one of the most important historical events in American history, Makeba asks us to question a history we believe to be true, empowering us at the same with the knowledge that we as individuals can promote social change.

A classical theater major in college, Makeba's first teaching experience was with first graders in her hometown of St. Louis, Mo. She went on to become a language arts specialist in Oakland, Calif., working with teenage students, many from extremely challenging backgrounds. It was there that she noticed her students living vicariously through the characters they read about, identifying with their adversities and using them to look at their own personal situations as well as those in society. Through story, her students were willing to discuss and work with these issues, transcending them through an understanding much deeper than that attained through textbooks.

"Kids want to talk much more than adults do," Makeba observes, adding that "adults often can't handle topics which are 'too controversial.'" Pairing up with a student in an after-school program called Young Artists for Social Change, Makeba found that through investigation of these controversial issues, she could best reach her students. It was also during this period that she stumbled upon the oral history of Claudette Colvin.

Makeba's research led her to endless stories about Colvin, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. She came to realize that she knew only the myths of these people, that the fullness of their beings had barely been touched upon. In creating her show, she decided that in order to get to the truths of each moment ("and there are multiple truths"), she had to include all of their voices. Makeba does so in her one-woman show by using one costume to portray 15 characters.

The greatest impact of her performance comes at the end, when she holds "talk backs" where the audience asks questions of the characters themselves, through Makeba. This technique, called process drama, brings the audience further inside the narrative and establishes a direct connection with the character and historical events central to the piece.

"After the initial shyness of being onstage themselves," says Makeba, "they are transformed by the experience."

Makeba's work has begun to reach an international audience; in March, she traveled to the Republic of Suriname, where she received a standing ovation from an audience that included the president's family. Here in the United States, she was recently asked to speak for the Youth Council of the NAACP.

Her message to these groups is clear. She believes in taking anger and transforming it into positive action, and in the importance of sharing what we learn to serve humanity.

"We have to look around in our own community and ask ourselves, 'What programs support our passions? What are the steps we can take to promote positive social change?'" she says. "Individuals hold great power, and we need to focus on channeling that energy into positive social change. We need more narratives of young people, whose language we can more easily adopt, as they allow us to put it all on the table, to look at appearances, race, gender."

Indeed, Makeba points out the invisibility of women as leaders. As she tells her students, "You have a legacy to honor. Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks paved the way-you can't reverse that."

"I love my work," she admits. "I want us all to know our role as history makers. We all have the life forces inside of us that allow us to speak, to take a stand. This work provides us with a different way to create civic dialogue. It's a work we must do."

"Rage is Not a 1-Day Thing!" will be performed in the Johnson Theatre at the Paul Creative Arts Center, 30 College Road, on the UNH campus on Friday, Sept. 10 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Sept. 11 at 2 p.m., free, 603-862-3044.