In a season of shows that have big-screen counterparts, Den­ton Community Theatre’s staging of To Kill a Mockingbird benefits from a rich novel, and only obliquely from the gravitas of the 1962 film starring Gregory Peck. Although it surely didn’t hurt that Southern playwright Horton Foote adapted the novel to the screen.

To Kill a Mockingbird is an understated piece of theater based on an understated story about a girl coming of age in Maycomb, Ala. It isn’t a contemporary play with the bells and whistles of theater technology. It’s merely a story about a gentle Southern lawyer, Atticus Finch, showing his children, Scout and Jem, how to survive encounters of injustice. In the Jim Crow South, Finch defends a black man accused of beating and raping a white woman. As the quiet, humble lawyer amasses a case he can’t win in spite of his detective work, his children imagine that another quiet man next door is the boogeyman.

Texas Woman’s University theater professor Patrick Bynane directs the drama.

—Lucinda Breeding

What: a drama by Christopher Sergel, based on the novel by Harper Lee

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday

Where: Campus Theatre, 214 W. Hickory St.

Details: Call 940-382-1915 to purchase tickets, which cost $17 for adults, $15 for seniors (62 and up), and $10 for children and students. Group rates also are available.