By Frankie Farrar-Helm/entertainment editor

With an early start for Women’s History Month, South Campus opens a production by a black woman playwright.

Lynn Nottage’s Crumbs from the Table of Joy starts at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 24-26 in the Carillon Theatre in the Joe B. Rushing Center for the Performing Arts.

The play takes place in 1950 with an African-American family who moves from Florida to Brooklyn, N.Y. There, Godfrey Crumb, father of two teenage girls, finds new meaning in religion after his wife’s death. His sister, Lily believes in communism and disapproves of  his marriage to his new wife, Gert, a white woman from Germany.

South Campus theater director Lindy Benton said she has wanted to present Crumbs from the Table of Joy for a long time. 

She said she fell in love with the script while auditioning for a part in 2006 and decided now is the time.

“The roles are very specific, and I was lucky to have the right people in the right place in the right time,” she said. “Lynn Nottage has an important voice that needs to be heard.”

Jasmine Nicole Lovings, who plays lead character Ernestine, said the part is a huge challenge because of so many lines, but Benton, who she feels is a “second mother” to her, pushed her and told her she could do it.

“I’ve learned to appreciate where I come from and what I have because the setting in the play is about segregation and going for what you want,” Lovings said. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t dream.”

Caitlin Reed, who said playing Gert with a German accent is hard, believes working with a five-person caast can be stressful but rewarding.

“It’s good to be in a small cast because it helps you grow as an actor having a bigger responsibility,” Reed said. “In my opinion, the play shows the audience that we, as a society, have come a long way but still have a ways to go.”

Me’Shellia Allums-Davis, acting as Aunt Lily, said the cast as a whole has learned a lot about what it was like for an African-American family in the ’50s.

“Learning the history of the time period was very eye-opening,” Allums-Davis said. “The audience will love it because it’s a comedy-drama-suspense play. It has everything you want in a play.”

Admission is free for TCC students, faculty and staff, $3 for non-TCC students and seniors and $6 for the general public.

Reservations are not required, but no one will be admitted after the play begins.