The Mountaintop
Katori Hall‘s
The Mountaintop
The Warehouse Theatre
Greenville, SC
April 2026
Directed by Tinasha LaRayé
Scenic Design by Josafath Reynoso
Costume Design by Kendra Johnson
Lighting Design by Bill Webb
Projection Design by Jason Thompson
Sound Design by Sarah Schaible
Props Design by Wendy Lynn
Produced by The Warehouse Theatre
Photo Credit: Wallace Krebs
The Mountaintop is a one-act play by Katori Hall that imagines the final night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 3, 1968, the eve of his assassination.
The play opens with King returning to Room 306, tired and restless after delivering what would become his famous last speech. He orders a coffee from Camae, a young motel maid who arrives with a sharp wit and an unsettling familiarity. What begins as an unexpected, charged encounter between two strangers gradually shifts as the night deepens and Camae’s true identity comes into focus.
Hall uses the intimacy of the motel room to humanize King, stripping away the monumental figure and revealing a man who is afraid, flawed, funny, and deeply uncertain about what comes next. The play does not traffic in reverence. It asks what it means to carry the weight of a movement, and what it costs.
As the night moves toward its inevitable end, the play expands into something more surreal and mythic, blending the personal and the political, the mortal and the divine. Hall draws on gospel, black vernacular, and theatrical spectacle to build toward a finale that is both devastating and, in its own way, transcendent.
“The Mountaintop” is a meditation on legacy, fear, and the ordinary humanity behind extraordinary lives. It asks not only who King was, but what we do with the people we turn into symbols.
Photo Credit: Wallace Krebs
