Sarah McCarroll, MFA, PhD

Katori Hall’s play reimagines the last night of Dr. Martin Luther King’s life. Set in his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, the play uncovers the man behind the myth and presents King’s fears about the future of the Civil Rights Movement after his death. King is joined in his room by Camae, who at first seems to be the chambermaid who has brought him coffee. As the play progresses, we learn that Camae is, in fact, a messenger from God who has been sent to guide Dr. King into the next life. It is Camae’s first day at her job, as it is King’s last day at his, and she brings her own scars and fears into the room to mingle with Martin’s. While in the play’s final sequence, Hall presents the sweeping panorama of not only the African-American experience, but the trajectory of humanity through both hatred and hope, at its core, this play is focused on the mortality of its characters. It presents both of them as human beings with faults, fears, hatreds, loves, and opinions, and insists that an audience accept them with each of these elements intact; Camae, the heavenly being, cannot keep herself from swearing in front of the reverend, while King, the icon of goodness, is not about making a pass at a pretty woman.

 

This insistence on the humanity and corporeality of the characters guided the costume design for this production. My goal was to create clothes that were believably “off the hanger,” rather than having a sense of having been designed. To that end, Camae’s uniform was allowed to appear slightly rumpled and not highly fitted; until her final angelic apotheosis, visually, she needed to seem like a real working woman from 1963. The same applied to Dr. King with even more force. Because he is an iconic historic figure, it was important to match what they saw onstage to an audience’s visual preconceptions and expectations. Pictures of King giving his Mountaintop Speech, which is has ostensibly delivered on the day of the play’s events, show him in a black suit with a plain white dress shirt and a black, brown, and grey striped tie. The costume design for King thus attempts to reproduce this visual, with a not-too-expensive suit, shirt which has lost its starch, and hard-soled dress shoes. I pulled a number of possible neckties, including one which happened to very-closely match the historical King’s, but wanted to give the actor in the role a choice of tie, as the single expressive element of costume available to him. After consideration, he decided that the historical match was most revelatory of character for him.

 

In the final moments of the play, Camae reappears to King as her angelic self, and the director asked for a white dress to signal this transformation. I chose to make the dress essentially a contemporary line; this choice emphasizes the contemporaneousness of the play’s final message: the baton passes on.

 

A note: The actor playing Dr. King was given a false mustache, to replicate King’s facial hair, but had been adamant from before casting that he was unwilling to cut off his dreadlocks; they could not be adequately covered by a wig, so the decision was made to pin them back.