Martin Luther King Jr. in Riverside Theatre spotlight

On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told an overflow crowd in Memphis that he wasn’t worried about the difficult days lying ahead, because he had “been to the mountaintop” and had “seen the Promised Land.”

In the finale to his final speech, in which he emphasized non-violent demonstrations against injustices, he said he wasn’t “worried about anything,” he wasn’t “fearing any man,” for his eyes had seen “the glory of the coming of the Lord.” And even if he didn’t get there with his listeners, he said: “I want you to know that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy tonight.”

The next day, he was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

But what happened in his hotel room during the hours between his speech at Mason Temple and his assassination?

Playwright Katori Hall has woven fact with fiction into “The Mountaintop,” opening Friday and continuing through March 10 at Riverside Theatre in Iowa City. The two-person play stars Monte J. Howell as King and Tierra Plowden as Camae, a hotel maid who brings a cup of coffee to his room and through their fictional conversation, challenges him to confront his destiny.

Curtis M. Jackson of Washington, D.C., who has appeared as an actor and director at Riverside Theatre, is returning to direct this show that’s both powerful and personal. A show that humanizes the minister and activist who championed the idea of peaceful protest during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, calling for an end to segregation and violence.

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King is the figure who has become a legend. Jackson often has to remind himself that another person is in the room — and she is the one with the voice that rises in this play.

“There’s this automatic assumption that it would be about (King’s) legacy and how it’s been passed on,” said Jackson, 41, an Equity actor who has to use his middle initial professionally, since another Curtis Jackson registered his name first with the Actors’ Equity union — an actor more widely known as rapper 50 Cent.

In “The Mountaintop,” the fictional Camae represents the Black women in 1968 about whom so little is known. Dates mentioned in the play are based on facts, but “everything else is conjecture,” Jackson said.

“What she speaks about can be found in fact, in the way where you might find a person who had told the stories about this specific community or what happened in this place during that time. ...

“It’s all through what was passed on by generation to generation,” he said. “I feel like that’s where the whole other half of the play comes from. You can’t really say academically it’s founded in fact, but (playwright) Katori Hall spoke about the story coming out of her grandmother and her mother’s involvement, and being around there at that time.”

Relevance today

King’s assassination happened nearly 56 years ago, yet the 2012 play speaks to today’s audiences, as well as to those involved with the play who weren’t born in King’s time.

“It’s a way of not beating people over the head with the Civil Rights Movement,” Jackson said. “We know about the Civil Rights Movement. We know about the ’60s — that entire turbulent decade — the most turbulent decade in America during the 20th century.

“It’s so like ‘choose your own adventure,’ the whole ’60s. I feel like people chose their own adventures, whether it’s liberation or the movement or any number of assassinations, the ‘this and the that.’ We’re able to go there with some things and not go there with other things. This play doesn’t really allow us to go there with the Civil Rights Movement, because we already know about that.

“I would say what keeps the play relevant is the fact that it’s a re-imagination. ... We’re just saying, ‘Hey, this is something completely fictional, that we’re able to make up.’

“The writer made this up. It is not real. It has nothing to do with any one main thing that happened within the ’60s. It has more to do with the humanity of what happens when two people are alone in a hotel room the night before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated.

“One of the characters is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The other one is the maid. I love the ambiguity of what we think is going to happen is probably going to happen. And I love the way that this play doesn’t allow for that. I’ll say we may touch upon it, but that’s not what the play is about.”

Jackson’s understanding of the play, its vernacular and messages came through when hearing the words spoken by Plowden, not just reading Camae’s words in the script.

“I started seeing the way Martin would react to her. I started seeing the way Martin would behave with her. And it seemed like that was it — we are trying to really humanize Martin Luther King Jr. in this free imagination of a play. ...

“Dealing with Camae, it’s almost as if I have to fight to get through the presence of Martin to get to this person,” he said.

His challenge as a director was to “hybrid the two worlds between realism and non-realism ... where a spoon could be a magic wand or the broomstick that you fly on. This is something that keeps the show relevant.”

And when the actors get it, “it’s like they are flying with angel wings. It’s just those two on the stage, and the rest of the world can watch if they want. That’s all they have to do. All they have to do is be there with each other, and it’s theirs.”

Jackson hopes the play “opens the audience up to those people that we don’t have too much information on in academic form.”

“I hope it opens them up to those oral histories and to putting investment in finding more truth dealing with people who are often ignored and forgotten about, because they could be the most powerful, magical people in the room.”

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Passing the baton

Beginning in kindergarten, Jackson learned of King and his legacy from the Black female teachers at his predominantly Black public school in Milwaukee.

“Especially during Black History Month, all activities were centered around learning about these heroes, our heroes,” he said. “I remember my teachers would have all the face cards on the wall” of Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, King, Malcolm X, George Washington Carver and Maya Angelou.

“I just remember always being surrounded by Black pride in that way in school, especially during Black History Month,” he said.

Viewing King and his legacy through an adult lens, Jackson said the play reminds him and everyone who is listening, that “there’s still a lot of work to do.”

“It’s showing that we have come so far. It’s reminding us of the goods and the bads, dealing with our own African American group in society.

“It’s saying that we’re still continuing to work. The baton is still passing on, it’s still passing on.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com