"Dr. Goddess" says the poster.

Kimberly Ellis takes this stage name, nickname and Web persona label with a grain of salt. Both parts are serious enough -- the "Dr." because she has a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue, the "goddess" because a woman wants to tap into her fully empowered, spiritual sufficiency.

Kimberly Ellis takes on a variety of personalities in her one-woman show, "Dr. Goddess!" Click photo for larger image. 'Dr. Goddess! A One Woman Show' Where: Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, the Jackman Building, 542 Penn Ave., Downtown. When: Fri. through April 16. Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun. 4 and 8 p.m.; April 14, 7:30 and 10:30 p.m.; April 15, 2 and 8 p.m.; April 16, 4 and 7 p.m. Tickets: $10-$20. 412-394-3353.

But put them together and there's an irony that Ellis finds comic. "It has deep meaning, but at the end of the day, you have to chuckle at it," she says over a burger in the Cultural District, across the street from the intimate Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, where "Dr. Goddess!: A One-Woman Show" will play two weeks, Friday through April 16.

This is "a homegirl's homecoming" for the Hill District native, who is Freda Ellis' daughter and August Wilson's niece -- not that his name even appears on her Web site, www.drgoddess.com. Kim Ellis has been accused too often of catching a ride on her uncle's coattails to publicize the relationship.

As we take a quick tour of her life, her uncle appears as one of the mentors -- Betty Love Gibbs, Sister Jeanne, Carlton Molett, a Yoruba priestess -- who helped shape her journey through childhood, dance, education, academia, self-discovery and show biz. That story has many points of convergence; a lot seems to come full circle with her stage appearance back in Pittsburgh.

"Full circle" is an exaggeration, Ellis being just into her 30s. But as her show dramatizes, she imagines herself in many roles, all coming together.

"A girl grows up," says her brochure. "A poet finds her verse. A woman sings her song." She calls her 80-minute show, directed by Eileen J. Morris, a "coming-of-age, multimedia, variety show about a young woman in urban America whose neuroses in academia meet the social commentary of the comedic stage."

She plays 15 different characters. Segments include dramatic monologues, poetry, music, jazz, sketch comedy and hip-hop dance, and have such titles as "The African American: An Open Poem Response to Smokey Robinson," "If Revolution Were an After-Thanksgiving Day Sale," "Anything With a Phat Beat," "King Solomon's Mind" and "Extreme Makeover."

Ellis has been on leave from her academic career the past year, on a tour that had her in March at two sites in Boston, then Atlanta and Lincroft, N.J. But Pittsburgh is special, giving her a chance to dedicate specific performances to mentors and youthful experiences: for example, Sunday is "I Survived Catholic School" day.

Every show is the same, she says, "only the after-party is different," when she'll be joined by people from her past or young people from the present. For a one-woman show, there's a large supportive staff (thanks to a generous grant from the Multi-Cultural Artistic Initiative), and the Tony Campbell jazz band will play.

IN THE BEGINNING

Ellis' life story is what "Dr. Goddess" (the show) is all about. It began in New York City, where her father, Paul Ellis, was "a starving artist" -- a singer, actor and model whose face showed up in "almost every Ebony or Jet in the '70s."

He died when she was 9, but he was her first connection to the theater, she says, and she learns more about his career at every black theater festival she attends. You can feel her pleasure at recalling how that great man of the theater, Woody King Jr., greeted her wonderingly, "You're Paul's daughter!"

When she was 5, the family moved back to Pittsburgh, mainly, she says, to put her in better schools. One of her first and most lasting mentors was Gibbs, who taught ballet, tap and jazz dance at the Downtown Y, where Ellis began at 7. In three hard hours every Saturday, "She taught me everything I know about dance and a lot of what I know about stage presence and presentation. ... I am still dancing."

Ellis started school at McKelvy and St. Benedict the Moor, then went to St. Paul's Cathedral School until it merged with Sacred Heart to form Oakland Catholic, where she was in the first graduating class.

She continued her studies at Emory University in Atlanta, the University of Connecticut, where she got her theater grounding, and Purdue for her Ph.D.

Her uncle's plays certainly played a part in her appreciation of history. And she is grateful for his support -- a computer on graduation from high school and money whenever he saw her throughout school: "I'm very frugal; it went a long way."

After four years at Purdue, she had a two-year dissertation fellowship and post-doc at DePaul, then came to Pitt's Africana Studies Department for a year's appointment to fill in for the recently deceased poet and playwright, Rob Penny, a friend of her uncle's -- another circle completed. Then came a year at the University of Houston.

But along the way, she'd been yearning to create. She'd choreographed 14 pieces at Purdue and composed a song. And she'd taken a workshop at the National Black Theatre Festival on how to do a one-person show. So while at Pitt, on the spur of the moment, she turned a nine-page poetic response she wrote to Smokey Robinson about identity politics into a three-page piece for a poetry slam at Dowe's -- and she won.

She started writing more. When her uncle was here for the Heinz Awards in December 2003, he read a sheaf of her poems and said, "Are you ready to change careers?"

"I thought he was just being a loving, supportive uncle," she says, but within a year she'd done four early showcases of her one-woman show. "So as in many things, he proved prophetic."

Ellis had already started calling herself Goddess online, so it naturally became Dr. Goddess. She discovered there was a call for her show. So her academics are on hold while she tries out this new adventure. Pittsburgh re-encounters her as Dr. Goddess.