Katori Hall (born May 10, 1981) is an American playwright, journalist and actress from Memphis, Tennessee.
Her play The Mountaintop, about Martin Luther King's last night before his assassination, premiered in London in 2009 to great critical acclaim. After a sell-out run at Theatre 503, the play transferred to the Trafalgar Studios in the West End. The production was directed by James Dacre and featured British actors David Harewood and Lorraine Burroughs. Harewood was nominated for Best Actor in the Evening Standard and Whatsonstage Awards and Burroughs for Best Actress in the Olivier Awards. The production was also nominated for Best New Play in the Olivier and Whatsonstage Awards and Most Promising Playwright in the Evening Standard Awards. Hall won the best new play award at the Laurence Olivier Awards in March 2010 for The Mountaintop.[1] The win made her the first black woman in history to win the Olivier Award for Best New Play.
The Independent called The Mountaintop, 'breathtaking'. Theater critic Charles Spencer in the The Daily Telegraph gave the production five stars and hailed it a 'triumph'.
Other plays include Hoodoo Love, which was produced Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City, Remembrance, Hurt Village, which won the 2011 Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, WHADDABLOODCLOT!!!!, The Hope Well, and Pussy Valley.
Her awards include a Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship, two Lecompte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, NYFA Fellowship, and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award.
Hall was shortlisted for the London Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award and received the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award from the William Inge Theatre Festival. She is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Hall has been published as a book reviewer, journalist, and essayist in publications such as The Boston Globe, Essence and Newsweek. She has been a Kennedy Center Playwriting Fellow at the O’Neill.
Hall graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a major in African-American Studies and Creative Writing. She was awarded top departmental honors from the university’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS). In 2005, she graduated from the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University with a Master of Fine Arts in Acting and graduated from the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace playwriting program n 2009.