Daniel Morgan Shelley portrays Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in “The Mountaintop.”
When actor Daniel Morgan Shelley saw “The Mountaintop” on Broadway, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett, he knew he wanted to do the show one day and portray Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I feel like most people going into it, you don’t know what it will be,” Shelley says. “They know it’s a play about Martin Luther King, but it totally becomes a whole different show. From the moment I saw it, I said, ‘This play is beautiful.’ It’s funny, it’s very different, it’s not what the audience will expect.”
He auditioned for the play a few times, but never won the role.
But now audiences will be seeing him in Florida Repertory Theatre’s production of “The Mountaintop” (through Jan. 14).
“I’ve been wanting to do it for many, many years,” he says.
He’s glad to return to Florida Rep, having acted in the venue’s production of August Wilson’s “Fences” and its Play- Lab’s readings of “Berta, Berta” and “Damascus.”
“The Mountaintop” runs through Jan. 14 at the ArtStage Studio Theatre at Florida Rep in downtown Fort Myers. COURTESY PHOTO / FLORIDA REPERTORY THEATRE
In this two-hander, he plays the long-awaited role of King, while Hope Ward plays Camae, who visits him at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis the night before he is assassinated.
Written by Katori Hall, “The Mountaintop” received the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2010, making Hall the first Black woman to receive that honor.
Along with Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins, Hall was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical in 2020 for “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2021 for “The Hot Wing King.”
Playing King
Shelley has no trepidation about portraying such an iconic figure.
“The play already shows the audience a different version of Dr. King that they’re not expecting,” he says. “A more human one, but also Martin Luther King in a private moment.
“Today we live in an age where celebrities document all of these private moments on social media; we know what people are eating, what everyone’s doing. They’re taking videos in their homes or on vacation.”
Hope Ward and Daniel Morgan Shelley in “The Mountaintop.” The play received the Oliver Award for Best New Play in 2010.
But most of the videos Shelley was able to find were of King’s speeches and interviews, the more public man.
“It’s not like there were home videos,” he says. “No recorded phone calls of him with Abernathy, or he and Coretta having dinner, eating catfish.”
Because Hall’s play shows King in a private imagined moment, Shelley feels there’s a little less pressure to be the Dr. King everyone has in their mind.
“The playwright has already taken us a bit of a step back from the image or point of view we all have of Dr. King,” he says.
To study King, Shelley read some books. He started with King’s “Why We Can’t Wait,” about his campaign in Birmingham for desegregation. Then he read “The Radical King,” a compilation put together and edited by Cornel West.
“I started with the books, then I just watched whatever videos I could find on YouTube of the various speeches and interviews he did, to get his vocal patterns, his mannerisms,” Shelley says. “I wanted to get that Dr. King rhythm. My goal is not to do an impersonation.
I just wanted to find little things that will remind the audience of who the play’s about and who they’re watching.”
He’s also mindful that he’s portraying the man in a private, informal moment, not the public persona or great orator.
“I wanted to do a blend of the two,” he says. “If this is who he is in the big speeches, then what version of that is him in the private moments?”
Shelley’s excited about doing “The Mountaintop” in the smaller space of the ArtStage Studio Theatre.
“It’s going to be so intimate,” he says. “(The audience is) going to get the sense of peeking in on that moment.”
King, he added, “had the expectation of knowing he would be assassinated. But he did not know when.
“The beautiful thing about him was, despite that, he still did his work, he accepted that.”
This powerful and somewhat mystical play shows how far we as nation have come and how far we’ve still yet to go.
“The play reinforces King’s vision and mission,” says Shelley. “We hope that the play encourages everyone to continue striving for what’s right.” ¦
In the KNOW
The Mountaintop
· Where: ArtStage Studio Theatre at Florida Repertory Theatre, 2268 Bay St., Fort Myers
· When: Through Jan. 14
· Cost: $65
· Information: 239-332-4488 or www.floridarep.org