It’s been nearly 35 years since Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his stirring “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. The speech’s message of equality and brotherhood will echo from the walls of the Maintenance Shop Wednesday at 8 p.m.

“Dr. King’s Dream,” a one-man play depicting King’s life and career, stars Marvin Grays, a member of Minneapolis’ The Mixed Blood Theatre Company. The intimate play translates well to the M-Shop’s cozy interior, says Pat Miller, ISU lectures committee coordinator.

“A play of this kind is best performed in the Maintenance Shop because of its ‘theater in the round’ feel,” Miller says.

The play centers around a phone call King makes to his mother from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, the day King was murdered. King, who was in Memphis for a garbage collector’s strike, tells his mother about receiving several death threats, which worries her.

King, however, remains unaffected, and spends the rest of the play reminiscing about his successes in the civil rights movement, all the way back to Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott that galvanized the movement.

Jack Ruler, artistic director of The Mixed Blood Theatre Company, says recent challenges in civil rights laws makes the play even more important in today’s society.

“‘Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’ has fast become the names of streets and schools, but it is just a name,” Ruler says. “This play puts a personification to who Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was and what he stood for.”

Ruler says the theater company dedicates their work to the spirit of King’s mission.

“King was more of a personal icon,” Ruler says. “He is not a concept of the past tense, but is appearing ever more in present day.”

The Mixed Blood Theatre has a regular season in Minneapolis, and “Dr. King’s Dream” is only one of eight shows that travels the upper Midwest.

“In any given year, 150 people work for the theater company and about 200,000 or more people see a production,” Ruler says.

Ruler says the greatest part of the play is the overall integrity, how great King’s passion was and how King acted upon his passion.

“I just hope audiences share this same passion,” he says.

In 1960, King made an appearance on the ISU campus, giving a speech titled “The Moral Challenge of the New Age” in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union. He also participated in a social science discussion as part of “Religion in Life Week.”

What: “Dr. King’s Dream”

Where: Maintenance Shop

When: 8:00 p.m. Wednesday

Cost: Free