“Selma Again,” a performance featuring an acclaimed Boston performance arts company collaborating with high school students from across the city of Selma, will debut at the annual Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee weekend on March 1.

The performance will focus on Selma’s civil rights legacy, current struggles, and dreams for revitalization.

The Boston-based performing arts troupe, beheard.world, will incorporate spoken-word artists, rappers, street dancers, and an array of musicians accompanied by the Ellwood Community Church Praise Team. The company is a racially diverse collection of performing artists, filmmakers, and educators committed to utilizing the arts to combat racism and advance social justice.

Each act of the performance will shed light on the unsung high school heroes of the Selma Movement in the 1960s and raise awareness about new efforts to support teens and families living in Selma today.

Anna Myer, director/choreographer of performing arts, and Jay Paris, director of filmmaking at beheard.world, lead the efforts behind the production.

“Our organization previously toured the deep South, and when we talked to audiences, we discussed racism and how to make society more equitable,” Paris said. “We were in Montgomery for a conference and visited Selma while on the trip. And that’s what captivated us.”

Myer added that she’s been passionate about social justice work since she was a child.

“We’ve been doing prevention work for a long time,” Myer said. “Yes, I’m a dancer and choreographer, but when I was a young person, my dream was to march on the front lines with Martin Luther King, and I was too young. So this was my way as an adult to give back through the arts to express the issues that I think are important today, and the hate that’s going on around this country.”

Both Myer and Paris emphasized the importance of Selma’s history and how people need to know it as lawmakers take books out of libraries and remove textbooks from classrooms for having a “woke agenda”.

Selma High School students will rejoin the beheard.world artists in Boston for additional performances this coming summer with the support of the New Commonwealth Fund, while the LEF Foundation is supporting a beheard.world documentary of the entire Selma collaboration.

This is all happening thanks to a new nonprofit initiative, the Selma Cross-Cultural Nonviolence & Performing Arts Academy, founded by Dallas County natives, Selma Movement organizers, and Bloody Sunday foot soldiers Charles Bonner and Viola Douglas, and Reverend Gary Crum of the Elwood Christian Church.

The performance will take place on at 7:30 p.m. at Ellwood Christian Academy. Tickets are available for a suggested donation of $5. Students can enter for free.