The Mountaintop by VIA MEDIA / BAYSTAGES

NEXT AT DRAGON THEATRE

A L S O C O M I N G I N O U R 2016 sea son

MAIN STAGE When the Rain Stops Falling by Andrew Bovell May 6 - May 29, 2016 | directed by Kimberly Mohne Hill Wild Boy by Oliver Goldstick July 29 - August 21, 2016 | directed by Ken Sonkin On the Verge (Or the Geography of Yearning) by Eric Overmyer October 14 - November 6, 2016 |directed by Karen Altree Piemme

2nd STAGE Too Much, Too Much, Too Many by Meghan Kennedy March 25 - April 10, 2016 Anna Christie by Eugene O'Neill June 17 - July 3, 2016 Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett September 16 - October 2, 2016 Fiction by Steven Dietz December 2 - December 18, 2016

SUBSCRIBE NOW BY CALLING 650.493.2006 OR AT dragonproductions.net

D IANE TASCA and P E AR T HE AT RE pre s e n t

by Katori Hall directed by Ray Renati SETTING: Lorraine Motel, Memphis • April 3, 1968

CAST Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...................... Michael Wayne Rice Camae......................................... Nathalie Autumn Bennett* * Member, Actors" Equity Association.

PRODUCTION TEAM Stage Manager............................................. Marissa Stough Production Manager......................................... Patricia Tyler Scenic Designer...................................................Kuo-Hao Lo Lighting Designer............................................ David Gottlieb Sound Designer...................................................... Will Price Properties and Costume Designer.................... Patricia Tyler Set Construction.............................................. Norm Beamer Video Montage................................................. John Beamer Publicity Directors.................................... Stephanie Crowley Jeanie K. Smith Dramaturg............................................................ Susan Petit Key Art.............................................................. Patricia Tyler Website Management........................................... Ray Renati SPECIAL THANKS: We would like to thank Palo Alto Players, Dan Nitzan and David Hobbs for their assistance with this production The performance runs approximately 90 minutes.

1110 La Avenida Street Mountain View, CA 94043 650.254.1148 info@thepear.org thepear.org

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Beverly Altschuler Sharmon Hilfinger Dan Nitzan Ray Renati Diane Tasca

STEERING COMMITTEE Beverly Altschuler Paul Braverman Robyn Ginsburg Braverman Caroline Clark Elizabeth Kruse Craig Sharmon Hilfinger Troy Johnson James Kopp Ann Kuchins Dan Nitzan Ray Renati Jeanie K. Smith Diane Tasca Patricia Tyler

There will be no intermission.

Performances: January 14 to 31, 2016 Performance rights courtesy of Dramatists Play Services

/peartheatre

Videotaping or other recording of this production is strictly prohibited.

All images and/or content provided by San Francisco Playhouse staff, contractors and/or creative artists unless otherwise credited. Opinions expressed by contractors, contributors and/or creative artists do not necessarily reflect the views of VIA MEDIA. Photo credits are included as provided.

@PearTheatre

/pearave101

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT Born in 1981, Katori Hall a graduate of Columbia University and Juilliard’s playwriting program and has a master’s in acting from Harvard. Of the four plays she has written which are set in Memphis, where she grew up, the best known is The Mountaintop. Its character Camae, who often speaks in what Hall calls the “mutated mysterious lingo” of Black Memphians, is based in part on Hall’s mother, also called Camae. As a child she lived just a block from the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, and she always regretted that she was kept from hearing him speak on April 3, 1968, the night before his assassination. That regret, Hall says, inspired The Mountaintop. The play premiered in London in 2009, where it won the Olivier Award for Best Play, and opened on Broadway in 2011.

graphic design + publishing

[

providing outstanding graphic design + publishing solutions including what you are holding right now to the lgbt, arts, business and hospitality communities since 1998

]

clients include

san francisco playhouse broadway by the bay custom made theatre co. san francisco pride castro street fair sonoma county pride s.f. gay men’s chorus golden gate business association silicon valley shakespeare and the merchants associations of San Francisco’s

mission, noe valley, castro, bayview, potrero/dogpatch, north beach, soma/ south beach-mission bay and inner sunset neighborhoods

415.552.8040

The play’s title alludes to that April 3 speech. In it King said, not for the first time, “I’ve been to the mountaintop” and “I’ve seen the promised land,” but “I may not get there with you.” With those words he was comparing himself to Moses, who led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt but died on Mount Nebo, seeing but not reaching Canaan. King’s churchgoing audience was familiar with the story and would have known that God did not let Moses enter the Promised Land because he had sinned. (Moses had taken credit for God’s miracle of making water come from a rock.) Nevertheless, God let Moses see Canaan and promised that his people would live there. King was acknowledging that, like Moses, he had sinned, but that like Moses he trusted in God’s love. This is not surprising: King was a Baptist minister whose church, like nearly all Protestant churches, teaches that everyone is sinful but can be saved through God’s grace. The play reinforces the theme that even saints are sinners through its reference to Saint Augustine, whose famous Confessions document his ill-spent youth. The Mountaintop shows accurately that King was growing discouraged. After the successes of the Montgomery bus boycott, the March on Washington, and the march from Selma to Montgomery, which helped bring about the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he was unable to solve two major problems. One was the failures in the North and West of the nonviolent tactics that had worked so well in the South. In other regions, riots often replaced peaceful demonstrations, most notably in Watts in 1965. King’s other problem was the growing militancy and splintering of the Civil Rights Movement. Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown were among the most flamboyant and militant activists, while even members of King’s moderate Southern Christian Leadership Conference such as Jesse Jackson and Andrew Young were starting to go their separate ways. Further, King’s growing opposition to the Vietnam War and his concern over income inequality were seen by some as diluting the Civil Rights Movement, though he saw war and poverty as parts of the same societal problem. The play reflects all of these worries. In a 2011 interview Hall said that she believed that things had become worse than they were in King’s lifetime, especially income inequality. Although King’s legacy survives in the nonviolent tactics used by groups including Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, peaceful protests are still often followed or replaced by rioting and looting. America has not turned into the Promised Land.

advertise@via.media

–Susan Petit

a division of Caselli Partners LLC 4

BAYSTAGES.COM • 2016.01

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES NATHALIE AUTUMN BENNETT *

(Camae) is very pleased to play the role of Camae in The Mountaintop at the Pear Theatre. An Oakland native and UCLA graduate currently based in Los Angeles, Ms. Bennett is a member of SAG - A F T R A a n d A c t o r s’ Equity Association. She has performed a number of onewoman shows, portraying Bessie Coleman, Dorothy Dandridge, and the title role in Tituba, which toured the Virgin Islands and New York City to rave reviews. Other notable stage roles include leads in A Raisin in the Sun, The Piano Lesson, The Girls of Summer, and the title character in Toypurina at the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse (one of her favorite roles). Recently, she played a supporting role in NETFLIX feature film.

MICHAEL WAYNE RICE (Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.) has acted in over 30 productions, on stages in Missouri, New York, Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Michael is a graduate of the University of Missouri at Kansas City with an MFA in acting/directing. He currently teaches acting at the University of the Pacific and has also taught at UMKC and the University of San Francisco. Favorite roles have included Jacques in As You Like It, Boesman in Boesman and Lena, Simon in The Whipping Man, Tom in The Glass Menagerie, Killer Joe in Killer Joe, and Belize in Angels in America. michaelwaynerice.com

DAVID GOTTLIEB (Lighting

Designer) This is David’s second design with the Pear. He is the master electrician at

San Jose Stage Company and technical director at Palo Alto Children’s Theatre. He has designed lights for Persuasion at San Jose Stage, A Streetcar Named Desire at Northside, Phantom at Children’s Musical Theatre of SJ, Collapse with Renegade Theatre Company, and the set for Oliver! for Palo Alto Children’s Theatre. He has worked and designed in Georgia and Wisconsin, and he has a master’s in theatre design from the University of Georgia. Out-of-state design credits include All My Sons, Hidden Man, Fuddy Meers, My Antonia, 385lb Smoker and Waiting for Godot.

HALL

KUO-HAO LO (Scenic Designer)

has served as resident Set Designer/Technical Director at Palo Alto Players (20052009) and New Conservatory Theatre Center (2009-2012). Currently he is working as a freelance set designer. His awards include TBA Awards in 2015 for Outstanding Scenic Design Die, Mommie, Die! at NCTC and 2014 August: Osage County at CCCT and an SFBATCC Award for Set Design for Dames at Sea (2009) and The Sugar Witch (2010) at NCTC. He is a 2013 Faces of Theatre Bay Area Honoree and holds a BFA in theatre from National Taiwan Arts Academy in Taipei, and an MA in theatre from Lindenwood University, St. Charles, Missouri. kuohaolodesign.org

BENNETT

RAY RENATI (Director) Ray’s

prior directorial credits at the Pear include Betrayal, The Real Thing, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Death of a Salesman, True West, The Baltimore Waltz, Speed the Plow, Pick Up Ax and 2016.01 • BAYSTAGES.COM

RICE

is offering a 10% discount on your meal to any Pear Theatre patrons who say the secret password: LORRAINE. You will also want to try their special cocktail in honor of the show.

Pear Slices. Under Ray’s direction three plays have won Outstanding Silicon Valley Small Theatre Awards, and Ray was nominated by The San Francisco Bay Area Critics’ Circle for outstanding direction in the Pear’s production of Death of a Salesman. Ray studied directing with Jonathan Moscone at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he received his certificate in Acting Shakespeare. Ray is a proud member of Actors’ Equity.

MARISSA STOUGH (Stage

Also, bring in your Cucina Venti receipt for a free concession item when you see your next Pear show. Just drop it in the ice bucket as payment.

Manager) is excited to come back to the Pear for this production, having stage m a n a g e d l a s t s e a s o n ’s Betrayal. She is a recent a alumna from San Jose State’s theatre department and has worked on Emma, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Grapes of Wrath (both theatre and opera versions). She also has worked for two seasons at California’s Great America

on shows such as Aerial Ice Extreme! and On Broadway! Marissa was fortunate enough to do her senior internship at San Jose Rep on their new, original production of The Snow Queen. She looks forward to stage managing many more shows around the Bay Area.

PATRICIA TYLER (Properties

and Costume Designer) has designed props and costumes for over 40 shows in the Bay Area including Los Altos Stage Company, The Pear Ave. Theatre, Lyric Theatre, Palo Alto Players and City Lights Theatre Company where she won a TBA Award for costume design for Amadeus. She has appeared as an actress on many of those stages as well. Her performing background includes puppetry (Lunatique Fantastique), improvisation (The Second City), mime (Seattle Mime Theatre) and film (Hemingway & Gellhorn, Dumbarton Bridge and Trouble in Mind).

* Member, Actors" Equity Association.

(650) 254-1120 cucinaventi.com

NEXT UP AT THE PEAR:

Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov A new translation by Dave Sikula

February 26 – March 13

1390 Pear Avenue Mountain View

The Pear is delighted to offer its fourth Chekhov play, wonderfully rendered in Dave Sikula’s supple new translation. Frustrated love, misguided impulses, and hope - justified or not - abound in this witty yet heartbreaking take on human experience. 6

BAYSTAGES.COM • 2016.01

DONORS Our deep and heartfelt thanks go to everyone who has contributed so generously to Pear Theatre over the years. The list of those who donated to the Pear Avenue Theatre between 2002 and 2015 is posted on our website. Going forward, Pear Theatre programs will acknowledge donations made since June, 2015.

ROOTS [$1,000+]

Carol + Ray Bacchetti • Norman Beamer + Diane Tasca Rhoda Bergen • Kathleen Hall + Leslie Murdock • Scott Solomon Silicon Valley Community Foundation Donors’ Circle Joseph Sturkey • Dr. Thomasyne Lightfoote Wilson BRANCHES [$500+] Rosalee + Bob Clarke • Carlyn Ford Compton + Darryl Compton • David Cortesi Charlotte Dickson • Joanne Engelhardt • David Simon + Lynn Gordon Sharmon Hilfinger + Luis Trabb Pardo Henry + Marcia Lawson Jan + Don Schmidek • Edna + Dan Shochat • Mary Lou Torre + Rich Hagen ASSOCIATES [$500+] Connie Allen + Doug Greig • Susan Barkan • Martin + Crownie Billik • Cynthia Bitner Louis Caputo • Jeremy Carl • Constance Crawford • Patricia + John Davis • JoEllen Ellis Ken + Carol Emmons • Thomas Ferry Kurt Gravenhorst • Eunice Haas • Patricia Irish Patricia Levinson • Alex Meyers • Shauna Mika • Roberta • Morris + Phil Buchsbaum Pear Writers Guild • Vic Prosak • Hope Raymond • Elaine Rossignol • Frances Rushing Vivan Schatz • Dana St. George • Peter + Juthica Stangl • Joyce Tenover Mike Wilber + Dianne Ellsworth PEARS [$250+] Linda Ayres-Frederick • Scott Baker • Terry Bamberger • Susan Cronholm • Krystyna Finlayson Sharon Fish • Armando Fox • Nancy Frank • Jeannette Harris • Barbara Janney Brandy Leggett Petricka • Barry Lynch • Marten Mejstrik • Bert Mittler Danielle Moskowitz Sarah Phykitt • Dave Sikula • Scott Sublett Sue Valentine BLOSSOMS [$25+] Robin Booth • Linda Brandewie • Patrick Brennan • Helena Clarkson• Gertrud Cory • Anne Wellner DeVeer Pearl + Bernard Director• Marilyn Edwardson • Dianne Gribschaw • Max Gutmann • Leah Halper Eleanor Hansen • Baba Nicole Herrick • Susan Jackson • Earl Karn• Georgia + Raymond Marotta Elyce Melmon • Brenda Miller • Elaine Moise • Albert Moon • Carole Mullowney • John Musgrave Ross Peter Nelson • Elizabeth Owen • Peter + Natalie Panfili • Denise Prosser • Douglas + Joanne Rees Toby Reitman • Sherrean Rundberg • Norma Schleunes • Chalmers Smith Marketa Spiro • Laura Stefanski Marilyn Walter • Gayle Wiener

THANK YOU!

2016.01 • BAYSTAGES.COM

JANUARY 19 TO MARCH 5

415.677.9596 • SFPLAYHOUSE.ORG