There’s a lot of talk in Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s new play “[hieroglyph],” about hidden messages in art. The title comes up in the story because of mysterious symbols that 13-year-old Hurricane Katrina refugee Davis keeps putting into all her drawings, spurring her high school art teacher to pry into what trauma Davis might be keeping bottled up.

The message of the play itself, on the other hand, is far from hidden. It’s expressed clearly and forthrightly throughout the story.

An online coproduction of San Francisco Playhouse and Lorraine Hansberry Theatre streaming on demand through April 3, “[hieroglyph]” is part of a planned 10-play Katrina Cycle by Dickerson-Despenza. It’s the first show Margo Hall has directed for LHT since she took over as its new artistic director in September, and in fact it’s the company’s first production since the start of the pandemic over a year ago.

Jamella Cross is marvelously compelling as Davis, who’s trying her best to adjust to her new life in Chicago but finds herself continually haunted by the past. She’s a bright kid but introverted and withdrawn, uncomfortable with being touched and with talking about her feelings. Her art teacher, Ms. T (portrayed with sympathetic strength by Safiya Fredericks), keeps trying to draw Davis out without much luck.

Davis only really comes out of her shell with Leah, a new friend from school (Anna Marie Sharpe, bursting with chatty exuberance). It’s a delight to watch Leah coaching Davis in the local dances, with lively choreography by Latanya D. Tigner.

Davis’ mother chose to stay in New Orleans, while her father gruffly insists on focusing on their new life in Chicago. We do see father Ernest on the phone trying to convince his wife to join them, but in this play, at least, the mother is defined by her absence. Another play in the cycle, “shadow/land,” tells the story of Davis’ mother and grandmother. (It premieres as an online audio play on April 13, produced by New York’s Public Theater.)

Ernest loves Davis dearly but is limited in his emotional repertoire. Seeing his daughter struggling in school, all he can think to do is chide her and ground her, bristling at any suggestion that she might need help processing what she went through, or even that she might have gone through more than he thinks she did. As played with stern exasperation by Khary L. Moye, he’s no simple caricature of an overbearing dad but also has some tender moments with his daughter. Everybody’s just doing the best they can.

Filmed onstage at San Francisco Playhouse, Hall’s gripping production is captured onscreen so as to feel as much like live theater as possible, with live-production editing by SF Playhouse artistic director Bill English and post-production editing by Wolfgang Lancelot Wachalovsky. We see the scene changes in dim light as English’s set rotates between classroom and bedroom or living room.

Teddy Hulsker’s projections are artfully employed for everything from simple views out of the windows to nightmarish flashbacks accentuated by creepy suspense music by sound designer Everett Elton Bradman and by Kevin Myrick’s shimmering lights.

Always gnawing at the surface of the action is the specter of sexual assault. There are as many harrowing tales of rape in the play as there are characters, discussed often and at length.

If the exposition is at times heavy-handed, it’s delivered with an urgency that makes it work. Dickerson-Despenza peppers the script with wonderfully poetic turns of phrase: “Ain’t want to look back and see all those burnt black faces wearing my same weary,” Ernest says, recalling their departure from New Orleans.

It’s a strong play, powerfully performed, its resonance undermined somewhat by an abrupt ending that feels more like the tune-in-next-week end of a TV episode than the conclusion of a self-contained story. It seems unlikely that another play in the cycle would actually take up quite where this one leaves off, but it certainly whets the appetite for wherever Dickerson-Despenza chooses to take us next.

Contact Sam Hurwitt at shurwitt@gmail.com, and follow him at Twitter.com/shurwitt.

‘[HIEROGLYPH]’

By Erika Dickerson-Despenza, presented by San Francisco Playhouse and Lorraine Hansberry Theatre

Through: April 3

Running time: 98 minutes, no intermission

Note: “[hieroglyph]” contains depictions of violence and sexual abuse

Tickets: $15-$100; www.lhtsf.org or www.sfplayhouse.org