‘The Mountaintop’ imagines MLK’s final hours in the Lorraine Motel

Banner Arts & Culture Sponsored by Cruz Companies

“The Mountaintop” by Katori Hall brings the audience into one of the most intimate moments in history, imagining what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final hours were like as he sat in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. How would King feel if he knew what was to come? This month Front Porch Arts Collective explores that question in this probing production.

Hall’s depiction of King is not that of an infallible cultural figure — it’s that of an ordinary man. In the play, King flirts and frets, he orders dinner and he experiences exhaustion from long days and challenging work. He has the same ordinary emotions as the audience.

“Katori’s work is about humanizing Dr. King — not as a myth but as a flawed, brilliant, deeply human man,” s