“People have a need to mark themselves,” says Ater, the newly arrived refugee at the heart of Mia McCullough’s “Since Africa.” He compares the Dinka ritual scarification that lines his forehead to American youth getting tattoos or wearing gang colors.

Regardless of culture, all people have a need to belong, to identify themselves as part of some tribe, as Ater perceptively asserts. Notions of who we are and our place in the world can fuel fear, mistrust, misunderstanding and war. Yet they can also expand our minds and experiences, and foster a sense of family, belonging and cohesion.

Erika Beth Phillips (R-L), Nyeda Lane, Alephonsion

Awer Deng andRosina Reynolds in "Since Africa."

Photo: Nick Abadilla

“Since Africa,” now getting its West Coast premiere in a production by Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company, is a political yet personal discovery of identity. The theater group is dedicated to giving voice to the diversity of cultures that make up our community.

Seema Sueko directs with a steady hand and, with the help of a strong cast, brings both poetry and humor to this affecting tale. The well-written, if overloaded, script astutely reveals notions that we sometimes take for granted, often challenging our own perceptions on race, marriage, identity, art, gender and culture.

In the late 1980s, nearly 20,000 boys fled the civil war in Sudan. The refugees trekked hundreds of miles to camps in neighboring countries, evading violence and starvation. Half of them died along the way. In 2000, the United States opened its doors to nearly 4,000 young men, dubbed the Lost Boys of Sudan after Peter Pan’s gang of orphans.

McCullough’s powerful yet meandering drama focuses on the clash between a widowed socialite and a black clergyman over how to help one of the Lost Boys of Sudan acclimate to life in the United States.

Alephonsion Awer Deng, one of the Lost Boys who fled his village in southern Sudan when he was just 7 years old, makes his stage debut in “Since Africa” as Ater. Deng is a quiet force, natural and appropriately “emotionally disassociated,” as a psychologist explains after Ater impassively recounts his horrifying tale of murder and flight. Though emotionally detached, Deng’s Ater is likeable and humorous, and his efforts at cultural orientation are the most captivating pieces of the play.

Aiding Ater in his adjustment to urban American life is Diane, a wealthy white volunteer teaching him basic “survival” skills, which include opening a bank account, learning the bad areas of Chicago and how to open a can of lentils.

Rosina Reynolds plays the irreligious, privileged and arrogant Diane with a touch of vulnerability that makes her character sympathetic. She wrestles with generational and political differences with her college-aged daughter (Erika Beth Phillips). The two squabble over just about everything, and their relationship is further strained by the recent death of Diane’s husband while on safari in Africa. In his absence, Diane struggles with her own sense of identity.

Diane also butts heads with Deacon Reggie Hudson (Mark Christopher Lawrence), a light-skinned black minister who oversees the volunteer program. He both longs for and rejects a connection to his ancestral African roots. In Reggie’s case, the title “Since Africa” refers to the intervening centuries since his ancestors were brought to America as slaves.

Dancer Nyeda Lane plays a statue that comes to life, a sort of mother Africa spirit traversing the play’s emotional landscape. Lane’s fluid movements are set to Susanne Forbes-Vierling’s appealing choreography and the African beats of Paul Peterson’s sound design.

Playwright McCullough packs a pile of issues into “Since Africa,” including compelling and for the most part deftly drawn debates between Diane and Reggie over missionary work, ethnicity and colonialism.

But the play does tend to get bogged down in all these matters, and McCullough expends too much time on minor, implausible and unnecessary points. Eve’s protracted story about the events surrounding a scar serve little purpose beyond a neat contrast to Ater’s ritual scarification and needless basis of her mother’s overprotectiveness. Yet her growing relationship with Ater, hinted at, is never fully realized on stage.

With “Since Africa,” Mo’olelo continues its culturally and socially relevant work, presenting a concurrent arts education program that brings theater artists together with refugee and immigrant students to examine their own notions of home. The students will perform their original work on Oct. 28 at 2 p.m. at Diversionary.