SOUTH KINGSTOWN — Three food pantries and two homeless shelters are joining forces to bring a one-man play about hunger to South County.

But for the Grace . . . . Voices of Hunger was researched, written and directed by playwright David Eliet, who was asked to visit food pantries around the state, interview clients, volunteers and children, and then write a script that could help audiences see what it’s like to be only a paycheck or two away from chronic hunger.

Commissioned by the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, the play has been performed at Trinity Rep, Rhode Island College, Johnson & Wales University and, this week, Barrington High School.

Participants in last night’s meeting of the Hunger Task Force, a group that coordinates efforts to end hunger in South County, learned that five organizations are collaborating to find a South County stage for the production, set a date and sell tickets.

They are Wakefield’s Welcome House, the Westerly Area Rest Meals (WARM) Shelter, the Bradford Jonnycake Center of Westerly, the St. Mary-St. James Food Pantry in Charlestown and the Peace Dale Jonnycake Center.

As Eliet talked with people who depended on food pantries, his preconceptions that they were “homeless people with drug or alcohol problems, people on welfare, freeloaders,” quickly changed, he wrote in the play’s program notes. “Many of them were working people earning minimum wage or elderly living on fixed incomes. They were all being squeezed by the rapidly rising costs of housing, gasoline, pharmaceuticals and utilities.”

Bob Jaffe plays all the characters, not only clients and their children but also volunteers, a minister, a landlord and a clown. Somehow the clown is both hilarious and not the least bit funny.

“When I became a member” of the food bank’s board of directors, Jaffe says in the program notes, “we all believed that the food bank could eventually put itself out of business by eliminating the problem of hunger in our state.”

But it didn’t. Instead, the need has grown.

Susan Gustaitis, executive director of the Jonnycake Center of Peace Dale, saw the “powerful and moving show” at Trinity last year. She had just started working at the Jonnycake Center when Eliet came to interview clients. “The show was all the more meaningful,” she wrote in the South County Independent last fall, “knowing that some of their stories are reflected in this production.”

A date for the performance will be announced once organizers have secured a venue. NewportFed is helping with production expenses so proceeds can benefit the pantries and shelters selling tickets.

dnaylor@projo.com