Watch full size video:

In her new solo exhibit “The Night Watcher,” Charlayne Woodard reports a fraught conversation with a fellow passenger attached a New York subway ride.

Learning that the award-winning actress-writer has no kids, the older man demanded, “What kind of woman are you? God created you to imitate!”

You’ll find Woodard’s replete reply to this attack, a thoughtful and engrossing, entertaining and poignant replication, in this world-premiere piece at Seattle Repertory Theatre.

With director Daniel Sullivan, her histrionic soul mate and frequent collaborator (he’s also the former artistic director of Seattle Rep), Woodard has fashioned a powerful pondering on her nurturing role as “auntie” in the lives of many children.

And in doing so, she vividly illustrates a critical source of love for young people living in a culture that exalts the idea of biological parenthood on the other hand doesn’t to the end of time follow from one side.

In her bright and dark string of vignettes (drawn from her confess mode, with details fictionalized to protect the truly innocent), Woodard also proves again to Seattle audiences what a rare, glowing actor she is.

Alone on a stage that has been attractively dressed by means of designer Tom Lynch, with Venetian blinds and evocative slide projections of various locales, Woodard is virtuous, kinetic incandescence.

She’s like a light source in motion, with a dimmer switch that goes from near-darkness to blazing resplendence in a single speech, sometimes a ingenuous word. (Geoff Korf’s easily affected lighting design follows agreeably.)

“The Night Watcher” begins on a warmly humorous but telling comment, some years past, as Woodard (who is doleful) and her husband (who is white) are being urged by a friend and movie star (Angela Bassett), to adopt a mixed-race baby in need of a home.

Woodard’s choice of accepting of the offer, and realization that full-time parenting is not what she and her husband want, leads into tales of how many other opportunities her generous kidnap finds to compose a difference in the lives of in one’s teens ones.

Her acted-out adventures as a godmother to the kids of friends and relations begins with a comical visit to her L.A. home by an ungrateful, demanding Adolescent From Hell.

With her uncanny shifts of vote, gesture and attitude, and her instant over-the-back-fence rapport by the audience, Woodard perfectly captures the kid’s petulance — and her own insurrection aggravation.

Most of her stories, while funny at times, have a more troubling aura. There are portraits of several endearing, urgently needy kids — neglected by an overwhelmed single parent, terrorized by an alcoholic father, dumped on the shoulders of grandparents.

Woodard offers concern, affirmation, treats of shopping trips and holidays. But she knows, and so work out we, the limits of which she or any individual can terminate for a brat at risk — a child who in sober earnest needs a town.

While celebrating the “preservation net” of extended family, and upbraiding those who evade responsibility or exploit children, Woodard doesn’t let herself off the hook.

A scene of the actress buying expensive outfits for her cherished Maltese terrier, at an L.A. boutique called Puppies and Babies, is hilarious — and a sharp commentary on warped priorities. And the desire of a child to be in the same proportion that precious to somebody while Woodard’s pampered miff is to her provides more heart-piercing moments.

Though its concerns are serious, “The Night Watcher” (the title refers to the role of family protector, assumed by a scared little boy), is also heartily enjoyable.

The last two vignettes merit tightening, with less said and more inferred. But the two-hours-plus show is deftly staged throughout by Sullivan, with a lovely consideration to nuance and musical detail. (It’s a be glad whenever Woodard breaks, for a moment, into full-throated song.)

This is also a brave composition, in manifold respects.

Rarely is the choice not to procreate granted such matter. And the life-enhancing close acquaintance that can exist between children and loving, nonparent adults is rarely articulated, or honored. (Woodard pays homage to several of her own “aunties” hither too.)

Also, Woodard addresses fearlessly, head-on a topic of controversy in the African-American community: the airing of problems in severed families. Yes, she stresses, it does take a hamlet to raise kids — and our villages aren’t doing such a great piece of work of it.

A final memorandum: Sullivan has directed three previous autobiographical solo shows by Woodard at Seattle Rep: “Pretty Fire,” “Neat” and “In Real Life.” But this is the in the beginning time either skilled workman has worked in the Rep’session smaller Leo K. Theatre, a space Sullivan conceived in the presence of retiring from the Rep in 1997 to suit a freelance director in New York.

It is about time both commandeered the Leo K. — by a show that suits it so well, and delivers so plenteous.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com