If he were still alive today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be 90. It’s been 51 years since his assassination, and it’s already difficult to imagine that such a person lived, with such power to mobilize people in the struggle for freedom and equality. His life can feel like folklore now, like a saint’s life.
In his last speech, the real Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have been to the mountaintop, and I have seen the Promised Land.” This play, which debuted in 2009, tries to insist that the Promised Land for which King died is somehow our glorious present. Now it feels like a song of innocence from the heart of the Obama years. As the poet Simone White has said, “Every minute the Declaration must be signed.” King didn’t have the luxury of assurance in anything; he was a prisoner of hope. He believed in his people’s fight for freedom, even if that fight will never end. That faith, not any assurance, is what allowed him to intone, before he died, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” v
Through 6/30: Sat 7 PM, Sun 3 PM, Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St., Evanston, 847-866-5914, cityofevanston.org, $20.
