Oakland Theater Project’s 2026 Season To Launch With THE MOUNTAINTOP

Oakland Theater Project will launch its 2026 season with a limited two-week run of The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, directed by Michael Socrates Moran and James Mercer II. The production will play at FLAX art & design from February 5–15.

Set on April 3, 1968, the play imagines the final night of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. After delivering one of his most widely known sermons, King returns to room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, where a late-night conversation unfolds between him and a maid named Camae. The play examines questions of mortality, leadership, and the personal cost of pursuing justice, revealing a portrait of King as both an icon and a man.

The production will feature Oakland Theater Project Co-Artistic Director William Hodgson as Martin Luther King Jr. and Sam Jackson as Camae.

“Today, as we enter the 250th anniversary year of the United States, it is ironic that freedom in all of its forms, the bedrock principle this country was founded upon, is being threatened,” said OTP Executive Artistic Director Michael Socrates Moran. “The Mountaintop reveals the man behind the idol and what it costs to pursue freedom in the face of tyranny. This play continues OTP's pursuit of plays intermixing the political with the spiritual in hopes that the work both heals and invigorates our community as we continue to find a way to march forward.”

The Mountaintop will mark the first production of Oakland Theater Project’s 2026 season, titled The Land of the Free, which will explore questions of freedom amid shifting political and social conditions. Additional productions in the season will be announced in early February 2026.

Tickets & Performance Information

Single tickets will be available for $10–$70 through oaklandtheaterproject.org/mountaintop, by phone at (510) 646-1126, or by email at boxoffice@oaklandtheaterproject.org.