Playwright Katori Hall Will Make Directorial Debut with the Film 'Arkabutla'

Award winning playwright Katori Hall, will be returning to her home city of Memphis, TN to make her film directorial debut titled "Arkabutla."

Hall wrote the play "The Mountaintop" a fictional story about Martin Luther King's last night at the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis, TN. Hall's first film will be a narrative short based on "a true-life incident she witnessed as a teenager." According to Shadow and Act the film will possibly in black and white, in mid-October with a budget of about $30,000-50,000.
The story follows a champion bull rider who is reunited with his young children after being away from home: "To give his kids something of the elation he feels as a bull rider, buys a Jet Ski for a family visit to DeSoto County’s Arkabutla Lake. When a white lake official sees Chauncey with the Jet Ski, he assumes the recreational watercraft is stolen, leading to a confrontation that causes anger and disillusionment — the sense of hopelessness you take from a situation like that.”

On her film debut Hall says, “I don’t think of it as transitioning, I think of it as straddling. I don’t ever want to leave theater. In theater, the fact that you are in the room with the audience means the story is a living, breathing, transmural thing… With film, you’ll reach more people than you would in a theater, but also the visual experience is more all-encompassing.”
Hall plans to use local talent for her film and will have casting calls in Memphis at the end of the month. Email katorihallcasting@gmail.com for more information.

Photo: katorihall.com