Charlayne Woodard radiates vibrant energy. A striking woman with dimples as deep as wells and a face that refuses to rest, she has a story to tell. "It's important that we tell our own stories," she says. "We have to; they haven't begun to be told."

She means the stories of African Americans, such as those she has gathered together in "Flight," a new play with music set on an 1858 Savannah, Ga., plantation, that begins previews tonight at City Theatre. But as she sketches in her own life, over a South Side lunch, she might as well mean her story, too.

"It was the most exciting night in the theater I had ever had, bar none," she says of the time she faced a church full of 450 African American women and began to do the solo storytelling that has grown into a playwriting career.

"I never got to be pretty," she says of her early career as an actor that included a Tony nomination 30 years ago in the original "Ain't Misbehavin'." "Only in my own plays have I gotten to be vibrant, to sweep up the air." But she might add "in my life," since as she tells her own story, she metaphorically does just that, sweeping the room with her energy.

In addition to "Ain't Misbehavin'," Woodard's many stage credits include an Obie for Suzan-Lori Parks' "In the Blood," Lynn Nottage's "Fabulation" and, most recently, Katherine in "Taming of the Shrew" at Washington's Shakespeare Theatre. TV includes recurring roles on "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," "ER" and as Sister Peg on "Law & Order: SVU." Movies include John Sayles' "Sunshine State" and M. Night Shyamalan's "Unbreakable."

It all began outside Albany, N.Y. Her grandparents' generation were Mississippi sharecroppers who moved north and bought farmland there and called it the Promised Land. Her grandparents had eight children who all had big families.

"I come from storytellers," Woodard says. "We all came to the farm on Sunday, and after the football game or snowball fight, Grandpa would get his coffee and cookies and sit in his chair," and there would be competition among the cousins, telling stories.

Her parents, Alfred and Dorothy Woodard, were a truck driver and a nurse. To this day, "we do that Sunday thing at my mother's house, with 32 around the table."

Along the way, she remembers her grandma said, "Before I die, I sure would love to hear one of my grans sing in that Wilborn's Temple Church of God in Christ Junior Choir.' That set five of us off. ... At 12, I was afraid she was going to die once I sang."

Through singing, Woodard discovered the power of performance. "I never believed the power I had over all those grownups. I will run the rest of my life to get that feeling. I chase that feeling."

She trained at Chicago's Goodman Theatre school. Having grown up "upstate," she naturally headed for her dream, New York City. She worked nonstop for 12 years, going from one show to another, eight shows a week. "I was doing plays, I didn't care what," just as long as the role was good. But two comments in reviews by Frank Rich made an impression: "Just go to see the show for Charlayne" and "Charlayne shouldn't make herself so available."

She looked at her taxes and realized that in a few weeks in L.A. she'd made triple what she did for a whole year in New York theater. So she moved to L.A. and worked successfully in TV and film. But she began to worry she'd lose her stage chops. She got involved in the Actors Studio, but the others didn't know her stage work, so she lacked scene partners. It seemed she needed to do solo work.

Her grandmother had died, she was in mourning and she'd just joined a large church. The bishop's wife, who'd seen her work in New York, asked her to perform for a gathering.

"All I could think of was my grandmother and telling a story about why I'm an actor, because she started it all." She sang one of her grandmother's songs "to put me in her presence" and then told her personal story, but as she did, "I realized these women knew my story; they were finishing my sentences."

That was her most exciting night in the theater. At the end, 450 women passed by to speak with her, "and 50 said, 'Count me as your grandmother.' " And she was reborn as a playwright and solo performer. In the process, she overcame the prejudice against musical theater performers that had kept her from straight dramatic work. "I broke out of that when I wrote my own play."

So by Woodard's reckoning, her grandmother opened two doors, one by expecting her to perform and the other by steeping her in the telling of stories. Her solo plays to date are the award-winning "Pretty Fire," "Neat" and "In Real Life." She will perform her fourth, "The Night Watcher," at LaJolla Playhouse this summer and Seattle Rep this fall.

In all, she says, she uses only "music, movement and words -- the tools of the griot [ a West African storyteller]. ... If it works, the audience personalizes the experience. They come in."

As a playwright, she says, "I'm totally from the oral tradition. I have to tell [the story] to a friend over lunch." She quotes whoever said, "The first time you tell a story it's truth, the second time it's fiction."

"Flight" is her first multi-character play written for others, not herself. It was commissioned by Los Angeles' Center Theatre Group. "They wanted Br'er Rabbit stories, but I wasn't impressed. So I read for a year in African, Caribbean and slave narratives. It opened up a whole world I hadn't visited since the '70s."

She pays tribute to CTG's Gordon Davidson and Dan Sullivan (Seattle) and their staffs, who have commissioned her work. "They keep pulling it out of you."

For "Flight," the frame story involves a woman caught teaching her son to read and punished by being sold on the spot. The son hides in a tree, and the community of slaves tells him stories to teach him and bring him down.

"I've tried to create five equal human beings in bondage," she says: gardener, field hands, blacksmith and a healer/midwife, all jobs on the plantation." And because "I love creating characters you never see," there are also the mother, Sadie, and her bereft son.

Her director, Liesl Tommy, is a South African she met at Sundance. ("Women directors need opportunities; the guys get a lot.") It's choreographed by Pittsburgh's Oronde Sharif, artistic director of the Shona Sharif African Drum and Dance Ensemble, and the percussionist is George Jones, co-leader of the Pittsburgh-based Latin jazz quintet, Salsamba. The cast is Avery Sommers, Taifa Harris, DeWanda Wise, Kevin Brown and Joshua Elijah Reese.

Of course Woodard is at City because of her connection with City's Tracy Brigden: "She and I worked together on my early shows. Now she's captain of her ship, and she's bringing her friends with her."

"Flight" is said to be suitable for audiences age 8 and above.