Glover Says Dialogue’s the Thing in Stage Show : * Theater: ‘Lethal Weapon’ actor and Felix Justice star as poet Langston Hughes and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tonight.

It’s billed as “An Evening with Langston and Martin,” but for actor Danny Glover, the two-man theatrical production he’s taking part in tonight is largely a prelude to the question-and-answer session that follows.

“We’ve been able to develop a real close rapport with students,” said Glover in a phone interview Tuesday. He and fellow actor Felix Justice star as poet Langston Hughes and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., respectively, at Cal State Fullerton tonight. It’s the 10th in an intermittent series of performances they’re giving at universities across the country.

The University Center performance is free, but all seats are already reserved; there will be a “no-ticket line” in the event that some seats are made available by no-shows.

“The response has been wonderful” to previous shows, said Glover, star of the popular “Lethal Weapon” action-comedy film series as well as such dramas as the current “Grand Canyon.”

“Students are really trying to find something constructive to do with their lives, in their relationship with the community we live in, their relationship with this country.”

“An Evening with Langston and Martin” grew out of a one-man show by Justice, a Bay Area stage actor and director, focusing on King’s writings and speeches. Glover, a San Francisco native and current resident, had seen his friend Justice do the King show three times when he decided to approach him about doing something together.

“We thought the perfect complement (to) Martin would be Langston,” Glover said. Hughes, the poet and novelist who emerged from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, is the “preeminent poet of the people” and “really the major African-American poet of the 20th Century,” Glover said.

“I grew up with Langston’s poetry, basically,” said Glover, 44. His portion of the show consists primarily of dramatic readings of Hughes’ poems. “I love his poetry,” said Glover. “He brings us alive in a way.”

Although King was born 27 years after Hughes, his assassination in 1968 came less than nine months after Hughes’ death. Glover said the message of both men remains valid almost 25 years later.

In the question-and-answer sessions, Glover said student audiences have raised variants of the same question: “ ‘How do we realize their dream?’ Their dream hasn’t been realized, 20 years after their deaths.”

The dialogue between actors and audience usually leads back to political and social involvement--particularly a dedication to rescuing the country’s neglected urban communities--as positive steps toward realizing that dream, Glover said.

Tonight’s performance is part of the university’s observance of Black History Month, but Glover said the production has played equally well to audiences black and white in places as disparate as Connecticut, Iowa and Florida.

In fact, Glover said he resents the implication that the works of King and Hughes speak only to blacks. “Langston’s poetry is universal,” he said, singling out a 1938 poem called “Let America be America Again” as one that continues to have particular resonance.

And King, he said, “was more than a civil rights leader. . . . Martin Luther King was a human rights leader. He was a world leader.”

“It’s really a disservice to call Martin Luther King (simply) a civil rights leader,” Glover continued. “It’s like black people don’t have a world view.”

* “An Evening with Langston and Martin,” with Danny Glover and Felix Justice, tonight at 8 at Cal State Fullerton’s University Center, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton. All tickets for the free event have been given out, but there will be a “no-ticket line” for seats made available by no-shows. There is no availability guarantee for these last-minute seats. Information: (714) 773-3501.