Set Design: John Iacovelli
Lighting Design: José López
Sound Design & Projections: Marc Anthony Thompson
Stage Manager: Jennifer Palumbo |
Joseph Stern, producer
presents the Los Angeles Premiere of
THE MOUNTAINTOP
Written by Katori Hall
Directed by Roger Guenveur Smith
Starring Larry Bates and Danielle Truitt
FEBRUARY 6 - APRIL 4, 2016
Previews: January 28 - February 5
Thursdays at 8pm: Jan. 28, Feb. 4 ONLY (previews)
Saturdays at 8pm: Jan. 30 (preview); Feb. 6 (opening), 13, 20, 27;
March 5, 12 & 19
Sundays at 3pm: Jan. 31 (preview); Feb. 7 (opening)
Sundays at 3pm & 7pm: Feb. 14, 21, 28
Sundays at 7pm: March 6, 13, 27; April
3*, 10
Mondays at 8pm: Feb. 15, 22, 29; March 14, 28; April 4 (dark March 7
and March 21)
TICKETS: $30
Pay-What-You-Can every Monday night
(323) 852-1445 or
Buy Tickets Online
* On Sunday, April 3 (the anniversary of the night prior
to the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when the play
takes place) and Monday, April 4 (the anniversary of the assassination), a
panel discussion with special guests will take place following each of the
performances. |
|
ABOUT THE SHOW:
The Matrix Theatre Company honors Black History Month with the
Los Angeles premiere of The Mountaintop, directed by
Obie Award-winner Roger Guenveur Smith and starring Larry Bates
and Danielle Truitt. Recipient of London’s 2010 Olivier Award,
Katori Hall’s gripping and often humorous re-imagining of events the
night before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. takes on new
meaning with the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement.
What thoughts and emotions might have pulsed through the mind and heart of
Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 3, 1968, his last night alive? In The
Mountaintop, an exhausted Dr. King retires to his room at the Lorraine
Motel in Memphis after delivering his magnificent “I’ve Been to the
Mountaintop” speech. As a storm rages outside, a mysterious hotel maid
brings King a cup of coffee, prompting him to confront his life, his past,
his legacy and the plight and future of the American people.
“It was really important for me to show the human side of King,” noted
Hall in an interview. ”During this time, he was dealing with the
heightened threat of violence, he was tackling issues beyond civil rights
– economic issues – and was denouncing the Vietnam War. So I wanted to
explore the emotional toll and the stress of that. King changed the world,
but he was not a deity. He was a man, a human being like me and you. So it
was important to show him as such: vulnerable.”
“As a post-civil-rights baby, I'm very cognizant of the great
responsibility that has been passed down to me, but I can also look
through the lens of history in a different way,” she told the Los
Angeles Times. “It allows me to be a little more clinical, more
honest, sometimes a little irreverent while treating the subject matter
with utmost respect.”
The Mountaintop received its world premiere in London at Theatre
503 before transferring to Trafalgar Studios in the West End, where it won
the 2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play. The 2011 Broadway production
starred Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett.
“It’s a different America now, and this play takes on new meaning today,”
says Smith, who directed Bates and Truitt in a 2013 production at San
Diego Rep. “Before this, we didn’t have such a focus on violence. ‘Black
Lives Matter’ was not a phrase. We didn’t have this film called ‘Selma’
that has placed Martin Luther King into the public consciousness once
again.”
In 2009, following more than three decades of producing multiple
award-winning work for the stage, Matrix Theatre Company founder/artistic
director Joseph Stern resolved to redirect the company’s focus to
the exploration of race issues in contemporary society.
“Just because Obama is president doesn’t mean there isn’t great
marginalization going on interracially,” Stern told L.A. Stage magazine.
“I’ve always felt that race is the most important theme in our lives.”
Since then, the Matrix has offered up critically acclaimed productions of
Lydia Diamond’s Stick Fly, set in the Martha’s Vineyard summer home
of an upper middle class African American family; Neighbors,
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ highly provocative study of the history of racism
in America; a non-traditional. multi-culturally cast production of All
My Sons by Arthur Miller; and the West Coast premiere of Jackie
Sibblies Drury’s brave, chilling and very funny “We Are Proud to
Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as
South-West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years
1884-1915.”
Set design for The Mountaintop is by John Iacovelli;
lighting design by José López; sound design and projections are by
Marc Anthony Thompson; the production stage manager is Jennifer
Palumbo; and Joseph Stern produces.
Roger Guenveur Smith directed the acclaimed West Coast premiere of The
Mountaintop at San Diego Repertory Theater, the Bessie and Ovation
Award-winning Radio Mambo and Steven Berkoff’s Agamemnon. He
adapted his Obie Award-winning solo performance of A Huey P. Newton
Story into a Peabody Award-winning telefilm. His history-infused work
for the stage also includes Frederick Douglass Now, Juan And John, Who
Killed Bob Marley?, In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Christopher Columbus
1992, Two Fires, The End Of Black History Month, Patriot Act, The Watts
Towers Project, Iceland and, with Mark Broyard, Inside the Creole
Mafia, cited by the LA Weekly as Production of the Year for both its
premiere and revival runs. Among the many institutions which have
presented his work are the Mark Taper Forum, the Public and Guthrie
Theatres and London’s Tate Modern Museum. Mr. Smith’s Rodney King,
developed locally at Bootleg Theater, has toured internationally and was
recently distinguished with Bessie and OC Weekly Awards. Roger studied at
Yale University and Occidental College, and has taught at both
institutions. He directs his Performing History Workshop at CalArts.
Katori Hall’s other plays include Hurt Village (2011 Susan Smith
Blackburn Prize, Signature Theatre), Children of Killers (National
Theatre, UK and Castillo Theatre, NYC), Hoodoo Love (Cherry Lane
Theatre), Remembrance (Women’s Project), Saturday Night/Sunday
Morning, WHADDABLOODCLOT!!! (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Our
Lady of Kibeho (Signature Theatre) and Pussy Valley (Mixed
Blood). Her awards include the Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of
New York (PoNY) Fellowship, ARENA Stage American Voices New Play
Residency, Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship, two Lecomte du Nouy Prizes from
Lincoln Center, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in
Drama, an NYFA Fellowship, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, the
Columbia University John Jay Award for Distinguished Professional
Achievement, the Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theatre and the
Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award. Hall’s journalism has appeared
in The New York Times, Boston Globe, UK’s The Guardian, Essence
and The Commercial Appeal, including contributing reporting for
Newsweek. The Mountaintop and Katori Hall: Plays One are
published by Methuen Drama. Hall is an alumna of the Lark Playwrights’
Workshop and a graduate of Columbia University, the A.R.T. at Harvard
University and the Juilliard School. She is a member of the Ron Brown
Scholar Program, the Coca-Cola Scholar Program, the Dramatists Guild,
Writers Guild of America East and the Fellowship of Southern Writers and
the Residency Five at Signature Theatre Company in New York City.
Joseph Stern is a six-time Emmy/two-time Golden Globe-nominated producer (Law
and Order, Cagney & Lacey, Judging Amy) who has produced over 50 plays
and over 300 episodes of television as well as numerous long form specials
and films. His productions at the Matrix Theatre Company and other venues
have garnered numerous awards including Ovations, L.A. Weekly,
Drama-Logue, Backstage Garland, and a total of 43 Los Angeles Drama
Critics Circle Awards – the largest number of LADCC Awards garnered by any
intimate theater in Los Angeles. Stern is the recipient of the LADCC’s
prestigious Margaret Harford award, the Drama-Logue Publisher/Critics
Award for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement and the first L.A. Ovation
James A. Doolittle Award for Leadership in Los Angeles. He served as
Executive Producer for the first three seasons of Law & Order, as
well as producing the pilot, which earned him two of his six Emmy
nominations and two Golden Globe nominations. His groundbreaking CBS
special Other Mothers, about alternative lifestyles was honored
with seven Emmy nominations and received three. Mr. Stern's feature film
credits include Dad, which starred Jack Lemmon, Ted Danson, and
Olympia Dukakis. In 2004, Mr. Stern produced Our America for
Showtime. It went on to receive four Emmy nominations and won the coveted
Humanitas award. |
