Teen-age moms ShaWanda, DaWanda, TaWanda and LaWanda have attitude. They have “hair creations.” They have glow-in-the-dark nails. And they have babies.

        Luther Goins has been away from Cincinnati for as long as he was here — 10 years — but he's still one of the best-known names in the city's African-American theatre community. During his time here, he ran the theater program at Arts Consortium, taught at the School for Creative and Performing Arts, directed at Playhouse in the Park and chaired the Cincinnati Theatre Festival.

Goins

        He returns — or at least his work does — for the next two weeks at Ensemble Theatre, wherehis Chicago hit Love Child, is onstage as part of Ensemble Theatre's Off-Center/On-Stage series.

        The subject is babies having babies, and Mr. Goins delivers a hard look at the cycles of abuse and emotional need at the heart of one of the nation's greatest social problems. It's as darkly funny as it is distressing and as distressing as it is darkly funny. Last year it was named Best New Work in the Windy City.

        Love Child, says Mr. Goins, has been living in his head for a long, long time. “Growing up in Newark (N.J.), I saw them all the time. I've seen them all my life. Only the dress and the hair changes.”

        All these decades, and the problem remains.

        In Love Child, the girls are reluctant members of a parenting class at a home for unwed mothers. They smart off to the teacher (“who is every teacher I ever had”), they joke, they yell at their toddlers, who have names like Clinique and Herbal Essence.

        Flashbacks provide insights into the girls' painful lives even as older women offer life lessons as the months of classes go on.

        Yes, the language is strong, says Mr. Goins, “but that's how they communicate.”

IF YOU GO

What: Love Child     When: 8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through Oct. 14     Where: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St.     Tickets: $10. 421-3555

        Yes, those neighborhood matriarchs (Miss Fanny and Miss Pearl) are real, remembered from his own childhood. Mr. Goins grew up as one of five kids in a three-room apartment and even with a father present calls himself “a product of black women.”

        Mr. Goins believes that's changed now, and for the worse. Not enough of today's youngsters, he sighs, have the benefit of the village of women who raise the child.

        Yes, the African-American male takes some hits in the show. “Sorry, but I'm speaking the truth,” says Mr. Goins. “Is this every black man? Of course not, but...”

        Yes, this is everybody's problem. “People have nice houses and nice cars and they say, "this has nothing to do with me' but they lock their cars and put alarm systems in their houses and they don't want to use an outdoor ATM at night. So it is their problem, too.

        “I wish ETC would have a question-and-answer session after every show. Invite people to look at this problem for a second.”

        A Northwestern University grad, Mr. Goins moved back to Chicago after leaving Cincinnati. He has been managing director of Chicago Theatre Company for several years.

        He never had intended to settle in Cincinnati for 10 years. It was just that “opportunities kept coming my way ... and one year turned into the next and into the next,” he laughs.

        Everytime he made up his mind to leave a phone call would come in. Bill Dickinson, offering a teaching gig at SCPA, Worth Gardner dangling a directing job at Playhouse.

        “I had a great 10 years in Cincinnati,” says Mr. Goins. What made him pack his bags for good, he says, was “Mapplethorpe.” And, it was bothering him that while “(theater practitioners') hearts were in the right place, the commitment to do it wasn't there.”

        These days, he directs a little, most recently August Wilson's Seven Guitars in Indianapolis in August, he writes grants a lot and he's working on another play.

        Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, which is about “what single people do to get through the weekend” is ready to begin the workshop process, which Mr. Goins estimates will be “18 months of read, talk, change, read, talk, change.”

        Love Child opened a three-month run at Chicago Theatre Company (it was originally produced by Live Bait Theatre) earlier this month, and theaters in New Orleans andAlbuquerque are planning productions.

        For everything that Love Child has, including laughter and tears, what it doesn't have is a real resolution at the end.

        “Because I don't see any in the world,” says Mr. Goins.

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