WESTPORT — “Black Excellence Night” is the theme of a program celebrating Black life and history planned Oct. 19 at the Westport Country Playhouse.

The free program will take place from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19, at the Lucille Lortel White Barn Center on the theater’s property at 25 Powers Court. It is scheduled before the curtain rises at 8 o’clock for a preview performance of “From the Mississippi Delta.”

Drinks will be provided by 822 Mixology, a Black-owned, New Haven-based business, and there also will be food tables. Jazz will be performed by the William Fluker Quartet.

“It is so important that people of color not only have access to see stories that represent them, but most importantly, feel a genuine sense of belonging in the spaces they see them in,” Kendall Driffin, the playhouse’s education and community engagement associate, said in a publicity release for the program.

“ ‘Black Excellence Night’ and the playhouse are redefining who theater is for,” she added.

It is inspired by another program, “Black Out,” organized in 2019 by playwright Jeremy O. Harris, author of Broadway’s “Slave Play,” “to create an environment for a Black-identifying audience to experience theater,” the playhouse statement said.

“The Great Migration,” an exhibit curated by the Westport Museum for History and Culture, also will be on display in conjunction with the storyline of “From the Mississippi Delta.” The exhibit chronicles relocation by more than six million Black Americans from the rural South to cities in the North, Midwest and West from 1916 to 1970, sparked by economic conditions and segregationist laws.

To register for the free event, click here. For more information call the playhouse at 203-227-4177.