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In high school, Wiley went to what was then the Soviet Union with an international group called Peace Child, performing a play that U.S. and Soviet teens had written about nuclear weapons, social issues and the environment.

He wrote his first one-man play -- "One Noble Journey," about Henry "Box" Brown, the Virginia slave who mailed himself north to freedom -- in 1999, after noting a lack of touring artists focusing on African-American history.

He didn't anticipate the escalating success of his solo shows, but those who hired Wiley are not surprised.

Cissy O'Neal, who heads the social studies department at Chapel Hill-Carrboro's McDougle Middle School, says she never has to remind students to sit still when Wiley's on stage.

"By the end of the performance, Mike Wiley has commanded their highest respect and regard," says O'Neal, whose school has hosted several of his shows.

Wiley moved to the Triangle after premiering "One Noble Journey" at Durham's Manbites Dog in 2000. He later earned a master's degree from UNC-CH, where "Witness to an Execution" was born.

The 75-minute play, commissioned by UNC's PlayMakers Repertory Company, grew from an acting class assignment. Wiley had heard a radio documentary of the same name produced by Sound Portraits for National Public Radio. He was riveted.

"You listen to it, and no matter what side you come down on in this whole debate, you have to realize that execution is inhumane to the executioner," Wiley says. "In writing this piece, I sought to make that apparent."

While at UNC-CH, Wiley wrote his Jackie Robinson show and also performed in "Brown v. Board of Education," which Apex playwright Serena Ebhardt wrote with Wiley in mind.

Colleagues impressed

Ebhardt has directed several Wiley shows, and she also produces and performs intimate historical shows for her own EbzB Productions. She is impressed with Wiley's ability to portray multiple characters and admires the complexity of his writing.

"While many of his works examine civil rights, Mike doesn't frame his stories as black vs. white, good vs. bad," Ebhardt wrote by e-mail. "Instead, he examines events from all points of view -- in context and with relativity. His ultimate moral is clear, but he's explained his parable to those that have ears and still produced an evening of amazement for those who cannot yet hear."

Tyson praises those same qualities, which he says made Wiley an ideal adapter for "Blood Done Sign My Name."

He saw Wiley for the first time at Deep Dish Theater in the 2006 premiere of "Dar He: The Lynching of Emmett Till" -- a topic Tyson has also researched at length. Awestruck, he promptly bought 11 tickets to the next night's performance so he could bring his children, their friends and others.

Tyson says he considers Wiley a colleague, a sophisticated and diligent historian.

"Even though he's a playwright, and there's a sense in which this is a work of the imagination," Tyson says, "it's really all historical research from documentary sources, which he explores and interprets and then makes come to life."

Ebhardt calls Wiley's work a ministry, a term Wiley says he resisted at first because it seemed too heavy and demanding of reverence. But now he says he embraces it.

"It is a ministry, because it makes people think, and that's what ministers do: They make you think; they move you to action or at least dialogue," he says. "I'm hoping that by what we're creating, we will move people to action."

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