Atlanta's Alliance Theatre has revealed casting and a creative team for its upcoming production of The Mountaintop, penned by Katori Hall. The show will run August 30-September 22, with an offical opening September 6. Alliance Theatre's Hertz Artistic Direcor Tinashe Kajese-Bolden (The Preacher's Wife) will direct.
The cast will feature Rob Demery (A Soldier's Play) as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with Jade Payton (Glamorous) as Camae.
The Mountaintop follows an exhausted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 as he retires to his room in Memphis' Lorraine Motel after delivering one of his most memorable speeches. When a mysterious young woman named Camae delivers room service, the two engage in a humorous conversation that progresses into a soul-searching discussion about their mutual hopes and fears.
"The Mountaintop engages with history and dreams about a new future. I wrote this piece from a place of skepticism," Hall said in a statement. "As a young African American who grew up in the South, who grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, specifically, which is the place that Dr. King was slain, I had questions. The conceit of this play…and the fantastical approach allows there to be some room for a kind of image deconstruction—not legacy deconstruction, but image deconstruction—that humanizes those we have placed on pedestals. It allows for us ordinary people to find the extraordinariness in ourselves, bringing King out of the clouds, off a pedestal, making him flesh and bone and blood instead of a statue."
The creative team includes set designer Tony Cisek, costume designer Kara Harmon, lighting designer Ben Rawson, sound designer Melanie Chen Cole, projections designer Miko Simmons, stage manager R. Lamar Williams, assistant stage manager Barbara Gantt O’Haley, and assistant stage manager Xiaonan Chloe Liu.
Visit AllianceTheatre.org for tickets.