The new African-American Theatre Company of Butler County will make some history when it offers its first full-length play this week. Lorraine Hansberry's classic A Raisin in the Sun, playing Thursday through Nov. 9 at Verity Middle School (1900 Johns Road Middletown) is the first all black cast community theater production presented in Butler County.

The new enterprise is in large part the brain child of Hamilton residents Dan and Ruth Britt. It is presented in partnership with Middletown Lyric Theatre.

"We've always been interested in race, segregation, civil rights," says Dan Britt, who will direct. (Ruth Britt is costume designer.) They designed an exhibit for Cincinnati Museum Center that responded to the 2001 civil unrest in Cincinnati, but says Britt, it seemed as if they could do more.

"We kept asking ourselves, how do you break these barriers? If not in the theater, where? If not now, when?"

They started recruiting, and the first call was to Gary Hines (president of the local chapter of the NAACP). He and wife, Cynthia, embraced the idea. She became a founding member and is a Raisin cast member.

"We took our time," says Britt, "meeting all the people who would move beyond barriers. We've made some close friends."

In April 2002, they were ready and founded the African-American Theatre Company, with a lot of help. The Tanze Performing Arts Studio in Fairfield offered the new project a home. Bekka Eaton and Chuck Leonard, professors at Miami University-Hamilton, offered free acting classes.

Neighboring community theaters expressed interest. OxACT in Oxford will present another production of Raisin in late February, also directed by Britt.

Britt says he hopes to see "diversity in all community theater" someday soon. "And I'd love to find some black directors."

For reservations and information, call (513) 425-7140.