Associate Professor of Theatre Mark Cryer and Kiana Sosa ’15 are off to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to perform The Mountaintop, that debuted at Hamilton on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January. Sosa and Cryer will be performing the show Aug. 8 through 22nd.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world and takes place every August for three weeks in Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital city.
In The Mountaintop, by Katori Hall, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. retires to room 306 in the Lorraine Motel after giving a speech to a Memphis Church congregation during the sanitation workers’ strike. When a mysterious young hotel maid comes to visit him during the night, King is forced to confront his mortality and the future of his people. The Mountaintop features Cryer as Martin Luther King Jr. and Sosa as the maid Camae.
At the Fringe Festival The Mountaintop is nominated for the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award. The award is given to the best play at the festival with a human rights message. Cryer said it’s an honor to be nominated.
“The Mountaintop is the fourth show for me at the festival and the first I'll be acting and directing in with a Hamilton student/alum,” Cryer noted. “This one is very special to me and timely as we revisit why Black Lives Matter and the man whose dream inspired this new iteration of social justice.”
When the Fringe Festival concludes, Sosa is off to Italy to begin her Bristol Fellowship, “Hip-Hop Theatre: Self-Expression, Solidarity, and Activism Among Youth.”
Every year thousands of performers take to hundreds of stages all over Edinburgh to present shows for every taste. From big names in the world of entertainment to unknown artists looking to build their careers, the festival caters for everyone and includes theatre, comedy, dance, physical theatre, circus, cabaret, children's shows, musicals, opera, music, spoken word, exhibitions and events.
In 2014 there were 49,497 performances of 3,193 shows in 299 venues, making it the largest ever arts festival in the world.
Read a review of The Mountaintop performance at the Fringe Festival.
