Director's Note Todd MacDonald
Like many people in my generation in Australia, I held a very basic knowledge of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and the American civil rights movements of the fifties and sixties - I had broad brush strokes of admiration and knew of the famous ‘I have a dream!’ speech.
we understand about King to provoke and inspire us with a much more ‘real’ and flawed version of the legend. This is what captured me — the capacity for us to hear this play and this message with new ears …
I have always been wary of history plays that try to relive a particular period or place so initially I was a little nervous about The Mountaintop.
“This isn’t the ‘I Have a Dream’ King. This is a more radical King. This is King, the man; not the myth. I want people to see that this extraordinary man— who is actually quite ordinary— achieved something so great that he actually created a fundamental shift in how we, as a people, interact with each other. That’s a beautiful thing. And I want people in the audience to be like, ‘If this man—who is so much a human being—can achieve such great things, then I, as this complicated human being, can create great things too.’ ”
However, after reading The Mountaintop, researching the period and working with the artists on this production, my eyes have been opened to so much more. I have a greater respect and understanding of the wounds caused during the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties and for the centuries leading to it. It has also led me to a far deeper appreciation and concern for how the civil rights struggle resonates today in our society here in Australia. This is not a history play; it is a fiction – brilliantly researched, poetic and profound – but not a re-enactment. Katori Hall leaps from the edge of what
Katori Hall explained this better herself:
There is a long and complex history of oppression in Australia, from the treatment of Indigenous Australians and the White Australia policy to the slavery practices of blackbirding in the Pacific where people
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were tricked and kidnapped into working on Queensland cane fields. It is important to recognise these truths and consider our responsibilities in responding to them. Now more than ever here in Queensland, we have to reflect on who we are, what we value and how we treat each other. King’s message of civil rights, justice and solidarity are still powerfully potent today in how we reconcile our humanity with our Indigenous Australians, with asylum seekers and with the many and varied (and ever growing) diversity of humanity that is ‘Australia’ today. The message of Dr Martin Luther King Jr is one of hope; it is one of love. He understood that “love is the most radical weapon there is”. He inspires us to peacefully and respectfully keep on moving forward — pick up the baton, that may have been dropped, and to pass it on!