Collegians take the epithets and dissect them to a hip-hop beat

It might be comforting to believe the old adage about sticks and stones, but truth is: Names hurt.

Stripping such words of their power is the aim of college-age performers Miles Gregley, Rafael Agustin and Allan Axibal. As the title for their socially conscious stage show, they’ve strung together three slurs hurled at their respective communities: “N*gger Wetb*ck Ch*nk.” In the jaw-dropping initial moments of their presentation, they further shape these epithets into strands of rhythm and dropped bombs of punctuation. The result is an improbably infectious hip-hop beat.

Reminiscent of early Culture Clash or the comedy of Chris Rock, “NWC” -- the show’s safer shorthand name -- became a cult phenomenon in a handful of presentations at UCLA, where the performers are students. Now it’s being presented, under the auspices of the Latino Theater Company, at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, where it already has begun to connect with a young, multicultural audience.

After the explosive opener, the performers shift into sketches in which they look back on becoming aware of their ethnicity, feeling left out because of it, then moving on to create new models.

Axibal confesses that he wanted to be Caucasian -- “more ‘Cauc,’ less ‘Asian’ ” -- after the shock of learning that he didn’t look like Tom Cruise. Agustin relives the pain of being on a public beach when the INS grabbed a suspected illegal immigrant. And Gregley, who grew up in a mostly white neighborhood, relives the day a hurtful word popped out of “Huckleberry Finn” as his class read the book aloud. “That word -- that was me,” Gregley recalls. “It seemed everybody already knew it but me.”

Hip-hop swagger often surfaces in the telling; so do references to “My Fair Lady” and “Death of a Salesman.”

The laughter can be galvanic, as when Axibal -- trapped in good-guy looks and cultural expectations, -- says he envies his fellow performers because “you get to be all sexy and scare people and stuff.”

After so much daring, the performers -- who wrote “NWC” with directors Liesel Reinhart and Steven T. Seagle -- fall back on comparatively conventional ideas as the show draws to a close.

But by then the message has been conveyed in the performers’ easy interaction -- for instance, in the way they continually affirm one another by knocking knuckles, shaking hands or exchanging hugs. In that camaraderie, they present an inspiring vision of the world they’d like to see.

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‘NWC’

Where: Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown L.A.

When: Thursdays and Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.

Ends: May 8

Price: $20, adults; students and seniors, $12

Contact: (323) 461-3673 or www.latinotheater.com

Running time: 95 minutes