The play "Waiting to be Invited," which I saw Saturday night at Red Herring Theater (produced with Past Productions), was written by S.M. Shephard-Massat, a Georgia playwright who won the 2001 M. Elizabeth Osborn Award, given by the American Theatre Critics Association to honor an emerging playwright.

​Late 1960s Atlanta: Ms Odessa (Julie Whitney-Scott) Ms. Louise (Demia Kandi) and Ms. Delores (Patricia Wallace-Winbush) all work at a doll manufacturing company.  They board a bus driven by the avuncular Palmeroy Bateman (Harold Yarborough) that eventually picks up the rather confused Ms. Grayson (Josie Merkle).

Red Herring Productions teams with PAST Productions for a moving, righteous production of S. M. Shepard-Massat’s Waiting to be Invited, directed by Patricia Wallace-Winbush.

Waiting to Be Invited follows three friends and co-workers, Ms. Odessa (Julie Whitney-Scott), Ms. Delores (Patricia Wallace-Winbush), and Ms. Louise (Demia Kandi), in Atlanta in the early 60s, leaving work to take part in a lunch counter sit-in. Shepard-Massat’s play — among many other strengths — knows that most of life comprises the moments leading up to the moment everyone talks about.

​The hugely entertaining and quietly moving “Waiting to Be Invited,” a dramedy written by S.M. Shepard-Massat, is performed with relish as a collaboration between PAST Productions and Red Herring Productions.

Three black co-workers at a doll factory head out on a bus after work on a Friday afternoon shortly after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has been upheld by the Supreme Court. Feisty Ms. Odessa (Julie Whitney Scott),timid Ms. Delores (Patricia Wallace-Winbush) and observant Ms. Louise (Demia Kandi) plan to meet self-righteous pastor’s wife Ms. Ruth (Cathy Bean) outside an Atlanta department store and then go in to make a stand by eating at the previously “whites only” dining room there.

​All that the black women want to do is eat at an Atlanta department-store restaurant.

But the year is 1964, the risks are real and the outcome is uncertain as they strive to test a Supreme Court decision upholding the recently passed Civil Rights Act in “Waiting to Be Invited.”

PAST Productions Columbus and Red Herring Productions are co-producing the Columbus premiere of S.M. Shephard-Massat’s civil rights drama, which opens Friday at the Franklinton Playhouse.