Event

Waiting To Be Invited

It's the summer of 1964 in Atlanta Georgia. Four middle-aged black women, co-workers from a local doll factory, travel by city bus to a "whites only" eating establishment inside a downtown Atlanta department store. Their purpose is to "test" their newly acquired civil rights handed down by the Supreme Court outlawing segregation in eating establishments. This funny, touching play received the Kennedy Center 1999 Roger L. Stevens Award for new Playwrights and the Adrienne Kennedy Award for Most Promising Young Dramatist. "A poignant play underscoring the goodness of ordinary people at their best." (Christian Science Monitor}

The Cast of "Waiting To Be Invited"

Sherri Roulette-Mosley as Ms. Odessa
Lynn King as Ms. Louise
Aishah Harvey as Ms. Deloris
Shawna Pena-Downing as Ms. Ruth
Marilyn Lynch as Mrs. Grayson
Harvey Williams as Palmeroy Bateman

Directed by Warren Deckert

Production Stage Manager: Melissa Koerner-Fritzinger
Costumes: Gary Campbell

Georgia playwright S.M. Shephard-Massat won the 2001 M. Elizabeth Osborn Award, given by the American Theatre Critics Association, for her new play, "Waiting to be Invited".

She based the work on a page out of her grandmother's life: Set in the early 1960s, in Atlanta, "Waiting to be Invited" tells of Miss Louise and three middle-aged co-workers from a local doll manufacturing company who travel to a "whites only" department store to have lunch just after the Supreme Court rules segregated eating establishments unconstitutional.