The Nicholls Players will be performing Harper Lee’s 1960 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” in Talbot Theatre March 15, 16 and 17 at 7:30 p.m. and March 18 at 3 p.m. The play, which was adapted by Christopher Sergal from Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, deals with themes of racism, poverty and class.

Stanley Coleman, the play’s director and assistant professor of mass communication, said he thinks seeing this play would be beneficial to all Nicholls students.

“The themes in the play are not old,” Coleman said. “They are current.”

Still, Coleman said he was surprised by the amount of students who had not read the book or seen the 1962 movie adapted from it.

“A number of actors weren’t familiar with the play,” Coleman said.

Told through the eyes of Scout, a precocious young girl in the Deep South, “Mockingbird” tells the story of a white lawyer, played by Joey Pierce, English education junior from Raceland, who defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman.

The following backlash of the town’s white inhabitants confuses Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, and her innocence often shames them into hiding their prejudices. When tragedy strikes, she and her brother Jem must come to terms with their changing world.

Laura Templet, English education junior from Raceland, in the role of the adult Jean Louise Finch, said she has become more than familiar with the play.

“We have been rehearsing Sunday though Thursday for weeks,” Templet said.

Because the play has three main characters that are children, The Nicholls Players had to look outside of Nicholls for recruiting actors and put out an open casting call. Tessa LaFleur, a fourth- grader at St. Joseph Elementary School from Thibodaux, answered the call.

LaFleur, who plays Scout as a child, a pivotal role, has been acting at the Nicholls Performing Arts Camp for two years. She learns her lines by practicing with her mother, Susanna.

Coleman said the children are performing well, as is the whole cast.

“I have a lot of confidence in my cast,” he said.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” was Harper Lee’s only novel and she later refused almost all requests for interviews. Except for a few short stories this great work represents her only literary accomplishment.

Bryant Scott, an eighth grader from Houma, plays Jem, and Tristan Robert, marine biology senior from Mermentau, plays Boo Radley.

Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for general admission.