'Every day, I hear a story - and I think, 'Other people should be hearing this, too,'" said Sara Kahn, a longtime social worker who has specialized in aiding refugees from the traumas of war and persecution. "I could be tired or having a bad day, and once people start telling their story, it's riveting, completely engaging, and incredible."

After years of hearing the harrowing tales of immigrants seeking asylum, Kahn interwove some of them with her own experiences and created "Haven," a one-person show with music that opens Friday at The Next Stage theater on West 11th Street. Part of the New York International Fringe Festival, the annual showcase for emerging and alternative artists, "Haven" is one of nearly 200 productions to be presented at downtown locations during the festival, Friday through Aug. 29.

In its eighth year, the Fringe Festival - birthplace of such past breakout hits as the Tony- winning "Urinetown" and the hip Off-Broadway send-up "Matt and Ben" - has become a lot less fringy in terms of its theatrical prominence. That means more submissions (800 this year) and a tougher time for the 75 adjudicators who determine what goes into the festival.

"It's a process I can only describe as excruciating," said Elena K. Holy, the festival's producing artistic director. "The number and quality go up each year, so our task gets harder and harder."

"Haven" got a thumbs-up, Holy said, for a host of reasons: "the fact that the artist is personally involved in this kind of work, the combination of play and song, the intimacy of it, the broadness of it." Given widespread concerns over both national security and civil liberties, "Haven" no doubt also benefited from a sense of political immediacy.

Kahn, who runs a mental health and assistance program she founded for refugees at the International Institute of New Jersey in Jersey City, still appeared a little stunned last week that "Haven" had made it into the Fringe. "My original thought was to put it together for the institute and use it as a piece of advocacy, in the manner of 'The Exonerated,'" she said, referring to the play about wrongly convicted death-row inmates.

With the institute as a co-sponsor, Kahn initially hoped for an audience from local church and community groups and human rights agencies. "On a lark, I applied to the Fringe Festival," she said. "I never imagined the piece would be selected. It has just been an incredible, galvanizing experience."

An actress and singer before turning to social work 20 years ago, Kahn was rehearsing and doing some final tinkering last week. "There's nothing like fear of appearing in front of an audience to motivate you," she joked.

Bosnia experience

Kahn doesn't scare easily. She went to war-torn Bosnia in 1994, spending nearly a year there to set up a therapeutic program for traumatized children in refugee camps. (She returned in 1997 to help families understand the process of identifying dead relatives through DNA testing.) In "Haven," Kahn satirizes her gung-ho (and perhaps naive) attitude on arriving in Bosnia. As she re-creates the scene of traveling through an area of active shelling, clad in helmet and bulletproof vest, she exclaims, "God, this is great!"

Of course, what she saw was anything but. During her first stay, Kahn met a young girl named Lejla who had witnessed the murder of several family members. The child "didn't want to close her eyes, not even to blink, because she would see these images of enemy soldiers breaking into her house and killing her family," Kahn recalled.

A wide array of characters

Lejla, who eventually came to the United States, is one of the characters Kahn portrays in "Haven." The others are a West African soccer star forced to flee his country after being pressured by authorities to take part in a corrupt sports scheme; an Afghani man detained in New Jersey as a suspected terrorist the day after the World Trade Center attacks; and an adolescent war survivor from Sierra Leone.

Only the soccer player, Albert Nguidjol, allowed her to use his real name; he is listed as artistic consultant to the play and will attend performances to talk to audience members afterward, Kahn said. The three others portrayed also have seen the script, which reflects their comments, she added.

Kahn wasn't willing to entertain, even fleetingly, the possibility that the Fringe could launch yet another production of her show. She was concentrating on putting across its message: "Most Americans don't know what people fleeing persecution have gone through before coming to this country," she said. "If people really knew, they would care."

WHEN&WHERE"Haven," at The Next Stage, 312 W. 11th St., Manhattan, Friday through next Sunday and Aug. 19. For details visit www.FringeNYC.org.