Everyone knows what happened on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. But what about what happened the night before?
Katori Hall’s 2009 drama “The Mountaintop” attempts to answer this question with a reimagining of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last night on Earth.
Luckily for University students, the School of Theatre is bringing this magical vision to the Swine Palace’s Reilly Theatre, running until Nov. 19.
The show, directed by professor Femi Euba, has a cast of only two people and takes place in a single setting: room 306 in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Despite this, there’s a special theatrical quality to the production that keeps the audience engrossed, said Swine Palace Interim Managing Artistic Director Vastine Stabler.
The choice to put on “The Mountaintop” goes hand-in-hand with the theatre department’s mission of doing socially relevant shows, with Stabler especially citing last summer’s tragedies as motivations for why the show is being produced now.
The University isn’t alone in this mindset. There’s been an uptick of interest in the show around the country, Stabler said.
“People are trying to figure out the best way to work around and with each other while everyone is trying to figure out where we stand in the future to come and what the world will look like then,” he said.
In addition to attracting people with its modern-day relevance, Stabler believes the show will also raise questions in its humanization of such a well-known figure who is typically idolized in culture. He said the way King is presented — as a person with doubts, concerns and desires — may challenge audience’s assumptions of him.
“Making someone more human makes them more relatable,” Stabler said. “It can either be an irritant or you can relate to them more and see what they’re thinking and see how it relates to your thinking.”
Through viewing King in a new light, Stabler hopes the production will accomplish what all theatre should accomplish: to get people talking.
In a way, that’s already been done, as the University community is abuzz with excitement over the casting of New York professional actor Curtis Wiley as King. Stabler said the casting of King was one of the biggest challenges they faced, as it’s hard to find someone to play one of the most iconic orators and figures in history and make it feel fresh.
“We needed someone who could give us that charisma plus the vulnerability that is believable in a person we don’t always see as a vulnerable person,” Stabler said.
Wiley was brought in after an extensive audition process in New York with the goal of bringing professional-caliber theatre to Baton Rouge, Stabler said. On top of that, his temporary addition to the University theatre community has been a valuable tool for theatre students.
Stabler said that even though Wiley may not be a spitting image of King, they’ve hit a home run by casting the actor.
“His head’s shaved; he’s a little less full in the face, but he’s so good,” Stabler said. “He’s got so much of it down that you’ll forget that after a couple of minutes.”
The other player in the show is graduate student Sara Osi Scott who plays Camae, the hotel maid who, after bringing King a cup of coffee at his request, challenges him and his beliefs through a conversational exploration of their journeys.
Through the course of the show, the characters explore what’s happening to King spiritually and metaphysically as Camae tells him of his death the next day, along with doubts he’s having at the time of his last living days.
It may sound straightforward, like the standard set-up of a two-person drama, but the show is anything but. Utilizing aspects of magical realism raises the question of if what we’re seeing is real or a dream, Stabler said. The play space itself also contributes to the unique nature of this particular production.
Stabler described The Reilly Theatre as a problematic space in that any production has to employ the epic arena-sized theatre and make it close enough to the audience so the production is relatable.
That being said, the theatre is not without its charms, Stabler said, as thrust stages allow for the audience to physically gather around the action and still retain the feeling of immediacy provided by theatre in the round. Stabler credits the theatre’s ruggedness to the raw quality of the shows put on there, and he emphasizes that the space fits perfectly to the show.
“This [production] feels much more immediate than other shows I’ve seen in that space,” Stabler said. “They’ve cracked the code.”
As far as what Stabler wants the audience to walk away feeling, the typical ambiguity associated with drama isn’t part of that. He said that the production is clearly a call to action and hopes that people will be inspired to, like King, make the world a better place.
Stabler is quick to say that the show is not all about politics, though, as it’s a deeply personal story. He predicts the production will get audiences thinking and questioning, painting a richer view of the show.
“They’re going to make it look easy,” Stabler said. “It’s not, not in the least. They’ve done a beautiful job with it.”

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Dilyn Stewart

New York actor Curtis Wiley performs in The Mountaintop on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017, at the Swine Palace Reilly Theatre.