The Mountaintop

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated outside of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. What happened inside room 306 on the evening of April 3 is the subject of Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop. Hours after King’s final speech, punctuated by his immortal line, “I’ve been to the mountaintop,” the celebrated Reverend forms an unlikely friendship with a motel maid as they talk into the early hours of what will be his final day.

Katori Hall is an American playwright, journalist, and actress from Memphis, Tennessee. Hall’s plays include her Olivier Award-winning Broadway debut, The Mountaintop (Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre); her Off-Broadway plays Our Lady of Kibeho (Irene Diamond Stage), Hoodoo Love (Cherry Lane Theatre), and her Susan Smith Blackburn Prize-winning Hurt Village (Romulus Linney Courtyard); and her regional plays Blood Quilt (Arena Stage), Pussy Valley (Mixed Blood Theatre), Children of Killers (Castillo Theatre), Remembrance (Women’s Project Theater), Saturday Night/Sunday Morning (Prologue Theatre), and WHADDABLOODCLOT!!! (Williamstown Theatre). Her awards include Kate Neal Kinley and NYFA Fellowships; Southern Writers Bryan Family, Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting, Otto Rene Castillo, Columbia University John Jay, and Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Awards; and two Lecomte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center. Hall’s journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, UK’s The Guardian, Essence, and The Commercial Appeal, including contributing reporting for Newsweek.