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The Mountaintop Discovery Guide THE MOUNTAINTOP BY WRITTEN KATORI HALL BY DIRECTED SKIP GREER Student2014-2015 Matinee Season Series P.L.A.Y. (Performance = Literature + Art + You) 1 DEAR EDUCATORS, One of the many problems with celebrity (and especially modern celebrity) is how incredibly reductive it is by its very nature. It takes the object of that fame and strips them TABLE OF of their complexities and contradictions, leaving us with a few select images and a handful CONTENTS of easy-to-digest quotes but little appreciable understanding of that person and their work. Fame, in essence, so often robs a person of their humanity. It reduces them to the most About The skeletal of frames. Such has become the case with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mountaintop . 2 The Mountaintop in no way attempts to tell King’s life story. How could you sum up any life in a scant ninety minutes, much less one as eventful as his? The play does, however, invite The Cast. 2 us to consider his final moments and the ways in which those preceding years shaped his all-too-soon demise. It asks us to take a new look at the assumptions we’ve made about him Katori Hall . 2 and his life and to attempt to view those ideas through a new lens. The Mountaintop challenges us to reconcile the saintly icon with the very fallible human being – and to think about how the person informed the persona and the other way around. From the Playwright. 3 In a recent conversation with a teacher regarding The Mountaintop, he mentioned that he was excited for his students to see this play but worried that they were “MLK’d out” – How Much Do a concern reinforced by the other educators in the room. His concern was that “they only You Know know him as a person who made a bunch of speeches, went on a lot of marches and whose About MLK? . 3 birthday gives them a day off from school every January. And, honestly, who can blame them?” Again, celebrity has reduced King to as much for students and adults alike. From the The Mountaintop, then, affords us that rare opportunity to actively reexamine the life of Director . 4 someone who we think we know. It lets us free King from the very limited confines into which we have settled him in the forty-seven years since his death in 1968. And, hopefully, MLK: The it’ll allow us to grow a little from the experience. Person and A moment of disclosure before I sign off: as we give this guide to you to utilize as you see the Persona . 5 fit, it is with full awareness that there is still so much to say about King, the Civil Rights movement, and the extreme connectedness of the two. Our hope is that we’ve given you and Civil Rights your students enough launching points to send you down any number of fascinating and Timeline . 7 illuminating paths. As always, we thank you for bringing your students to experience the power of live theatre. Design: We consider it a privilege to be a part of their (re)discovery of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Costumes . 8 We can only imagine the conversations that will occur amongst your students as a result of their attendance at The Mountaintop. And where those conversations may take them. Design: Props . 9 Sincerely, Participation in this production and supplemental activities suggested in this guide support the Discussion following NYS Learning Standards: Questions . 10 A: 2, 3, 4; ELA: 1, 2, 3, 4; SS: 1, 3, 5 Eric Evans For a list of resources used in the creation Education Administrator Cover image: Poster for a of this Discovery Guide, please visit planned speech on the [email protected] www.gevatheatre.org/programs-for-students/ night of Dr. Martin (585) 420-2035 Luther King, Jr.’s death Answers to quiz on page 3 - 1: D; 2: A; 3: C; 4: C; 5: A; 6: D; 7: A; 8: H “MEMPHIS IS JUST A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR THE BIG ONE. MEMPHIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING.” - MLK 2 ABOUT THE MOUNTAINTOP Setting: Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel. Memphis, Tennessee. April 3, 1968. Synopsis: Worn out from an exhaust- ing day at the sanitation workers’ strike and following the deliverance of his prophetic “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” speech, Dr. King retires to his room at the Lorraine Motel where he is visited by Camae, a mysterious maid with a much greater mission than delivering his coffee. King must confront his mortality and the future of his people in this powerful, spirited, and vivid exploration of his life and legacy on his final night on Earth. Royce Johnson as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 39 years old, Above: The Lorraine Motel Preacher and Civil Rights leader. Joniece Abbott-Pratt as Camae. Twenties. A maid; her first day on the job at the Lorraine Motel. Genre: Magical Realism – A work of art that embraces magical or unreal elements as a natural occurrence in a realistic environment. Magical realism is what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe. Magical realism asks us to keep an open mind and suspend disbelief. Playwright: Katori Hall. “I’m a story collector. I hear a story, and I keep it in my arsenal. It will work on itself in me until it needs to leap Above: Making Waves by Rob Gonsalves, an example of magical realism out onto the page.” A playwright and Above, from top to bottom: Royce performer from Memphis, Tennessee, Hall’s mother, Carrie Mae, inspired The Mountaintop. As Johnson, Joniece a teen, Carrie Mae wanted to attend King’s Mountaintop speech, but fear of violence kept her Abbott-Pratt and away. Hall based Camae on her mother as “a way to put my mother in the room with King Katori Hall because I knew she didn’t get a chance on April 3, 1968.” u “I’M BETTA AT CLEANIN’ UP OTHER FOLKS’ MESSES THAN MY OWN. I WAS CALLED TO DO THIS.” – CAMAE 3 FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT “My hope is “I took a “How are we the audience will be chance. I didn’t know going to change the Below and at left: inspired by his greatness, what the road was going world? How are we going Quotes from but that they’ll also realize to be like. We made the road to pass the baton? Do we Katori Hall that he is for regular people. by walking and I decided to even have the baton in our I want the audience to become my dream instead of hands? Do we even have the come out saying, lying there and dreaming capability to pick it up? I ‘I can be a King, about it.” ask those questions a lot too. We can all when I look at the “To many people, be Kings.’” world today.” “I wanted to The Mountaintop is depict not only Dr. almost blasphemous: ‘How King’s triumphs, but also his dare you take King off a “Unarmed truth and struggles. He had vulnerabilities pedestal?’ I say, how dare I not? and fears. That is a man that I’m a dramatist. I’m supposed unconditional love provided a fundamental shift in to put human feelings on the stage. will have the final American society. He did this People are people. People bleed. extraordinary thing. But he wasn’t People die. People are afraid. word in reality.” superhuman. It’s important to My purpose is to tell stories - Dr. Martin Luther see the humanity in this hero that wouldn’t necessarily so we can see the hero be told.” King, Jr. in ourselves.” 1.HOW King earned hisMUCH doctorate degree DOfrom Boston YOU University KNOWB. His advocating compensation ABOUT for slavery MLK? ooooin what field? C. His view on “separate but equal” A. History B. Sociology C. Medicine D. Theology D. His trip to India 2. What early event established King as an important civil rights leader? 6. In addition to Civil Rights, what other cause was King supporting at the A. The Montgomery Bus Boycott oo time of his death? B. The “I Have a Dream” speech A. The Poor People’s Campaign C. The publishing of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” B. An end to the war in Vietnam D. The championing of Brown v. Board of Education C. A strike by black sanitation workers in Memphis 3. King served as the president of which organization? D. All of the above A. Southern Poverty Law Center 7. According to King’s philosophy, what are society’s “triple evils”? B. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People A. Racism, poverty, militarism B. Racism, narcissism, sexism C. Southern Christian Leadership Conference C. Racism, violence, capitalism D. Racism, terrorism, communism D. The Congress of Racial Equality 8. Which of the following are true about Dr. King? 4. Why did Attorney General Robert Kennedy order King’s phones A. He was a drinker and a smoker ooo wire-tapped in 1963? B. He was rumored to have been an adulterer and womanizer A. For King’s safety C. He attempted suicide at the age of 12 after his grandmother’s death B. King sympathized with Fidel Castro after the Bay of Pigs invasion D. He received threatening, harassing letters from the FBI C. Kennedy feared King was speaking with communists E. He was accused of plagiarism in academic papers and speeches D. Kennedy worried King might turn the Civil Rights movement oooo toward violence F.
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