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Exactly one year ago, I stood in that crumbling pulpit in Riverside and shouted that this war would be our own violent undoing, freedom's suicide... Well, I'll tell you, there weren't too many Amens that Sunday. But who is a man who does not speak his mind? He is not a man, but I am a man.The night before his assassination, King retires to room 306 in the now-famous Lorraine Motel after giving an acclaimed speech to a massive church congregation. When a mysterious young maid visits him to deliver a cup of coffee, King is forced to confront his past and the future of his people.Portraying rhetoric, hope and ideals of social change, The Mountaintop also explores being human in the face of inevitable death. The play is a dramatic feat of daring originality, historical narration and triumphant compassion. This Modern Classics edition of the play features a foreword by Michael Eric Dyson and an introduction by Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Theatre, University of Maryland.

This brilliant new collection of ten plays for young people will prove indispensable to schools, colleges and youth theatre groups. Specially commissioned by the National Theatre for the Connections Festival 2011 involving 200 schools and youth theatre groups across the UK and Ireland, each play is accompanied by production notes and exercises. The Pied Piper re-imagined, the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, witches in seventeenth century Norfolk, a giant baby on the rampage, an extraordinary day in an ordinary school are just some of subjects covered in the thrilling and varied new plays created by talented writers for young actors to perform in National Theatre Connections 2011. The plays in this anthology offer a huge variety of stories and styles to ignite the imagination of young casts and creative teams. Themes are both teenage and universal - ambition, dashed hopes, fear and confidence, loyalty and betrayal. These new plays embrace a huge range for their inspiration: they plunder classics and imagine the future.

An important new voice for African-American theatre, Katori Hall explores the lives of black and often invisible Americans with vivid language, dynamic narratives and richly textured characterisation.Hoodoo Love is Hall's debut play, a tale of love, magic, jealousy and secrets in 1930s Memphis, written in vivid language which captures the spirit of the Blues.Saturday Night/Sunday Morning is set in a Memphis beauty shop/boarding house during the final days of WWII. Rich with humor and history, it is a story about friendship and finding love in unexpected places.Winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Play 2009, The Mountaintop is a historical-fantastical two hander, portraying the penultimate day in the life of Martin Luther King.Hurt Village won the 2011 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Set in a real-life Memphis housing project, it explores in vivid and at times brutal detail a long-lasting legacy of drug abuse, child abuse, crime, and self-hatred within a poor, working-class, multi-generational Black family.This first collection of Katori Hall's dramatic works demonstrate her unique voice for the theatre, which is visceral, passionate and energetic. Hall portrays disenfranchised portions of society with fearless humanity and startling accomplishment.