Scott watson plays mr gilmer in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD at mill mountain theatre.

Returning to Mill Mountain Theatre for his eighth production, Brooklyn based Actors Equity actor Scott Watson will be portraying Mr. Gilmer in Mill Mountain Theatre’s 2024 production of “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

This production also re-teams Scott Watson with Timothy Booth, portraying Atticus Finch, after they previously starred in Mamma Mia at Mill Mountain and the wildly successful and sold-out 2017 and 2021 productions of A Christmas Story at Mill Mountain Theatre. Scott Watson and Timothy Booth will also be re-teaming together in 2025 for their 3rd production of A Christmas Story which is fast becoming a treasured Mill Mountain tradition.

This production of to Kill A Mockingbird also sees the return of Mill Mountain producing artistic director Ginger Poole to the role of Scout, which she portrayed in Mill Mountain’s 2014 version of To Kill A Mockingbird.

Notably, this production will also be one of the final productions of Ginger Poole as producing artistic director at Mill Mountain theatre before her upcoming retirement.

It is not hyberbolic to say that there would currently be no Mill Mountain Theatre without the inspired, fearless, passionate, and compassionate leadership of Ginger Poole. Throughout her tenure, Mill Mountain Theatre has survived and thrived through the hardest decades regional theatres throughout the country have faced since the end of World War 2, including the Great Recession and the Covid-19 global pandemic.

Not only has Ginger Poole steered the ship with a steady hand through these choppy waters, she’s also consistently directed, produced, staged and performed in countless top-quality professional theatrical productions at Mill Mountain Theatre, providing Roanoke and South-East Virginia with Broadway level live-theatre, adding artistic enrichment and contributing millions of dollars in tourism and property value to the greater Roanoke community.

Scott Watson is so grateful and humbled to have the opportunity to share the stage with Ginger Poole in this production of To Kill A Mockingbird for the first (and hopefully not last) time, and will always be thankful that she took a chance on him back in 2016 by offering him his first role in The Odd Couple, introducing him to Mill Mountain Theatre and what has become one of his most treasured artistic homes in the past ten years.

Scott is also thrilled to be working for the first time with Neil David Seibel, the director of this production of To Kill A Mockingbird, who currently serves as a Distinguished Teaching Professor at Auburn University at Montgomery while also directing theatrical productions around the country. Neil is a gifted collaborator, communicator, and visionary who has crafted an amazingly rich ensemble, tone, look and feel in this production which really brings Maycomb, Alabama alive on-stage.

This is Scott Watson’s first time appearing in a production of To Kill A Mockingbird and is portraying Mr. Gilmer, the State Prosecuter opposed to Atticus Finch in the trial for Tom Robinson’s life.

“It’s always difficult to portray characters who say or do odious things, especially those who participate in the vile dehumanization and institutional violence that is racism in the United States.

In my opinion, it is vital for the audience to see Mr. Horace Gilmer’s actions as a prosecuting attorney in this case as not just “doing his job,” but as equally damaging and damning as those of the clearly racist Bob Ewell. Mr. Gilmer represents the legal and institutional side to the oppression and state-sanctioned violence which is racism in 1930’s Maycomb, Alabama, a side of oppression which often jurstifies its violence with unjust laws laundered through official seeming court proceedings.

Mr. Horace Gilmer, by participating in this evil system and working on its behalf, is no different than Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi architect of the Holocaust, who said he was “just doing his job” and wasn’t morally or legally responsible.

While Atticus Finch represents the difficulty and courage required to fight against deeply entrenched, institutional injustice, Mr. Horace Gilmer shows how much easier it is to accept such institutions as unchangeable and, by participating in them for personal gain, perpetuate them.

There is a small note in the back of this particular production in regards to Mr. Horace Gilmer which says that he has his own doubts about Tom Robinson’s guilt in the trial, but pursues a conviction anyways, and this seems to imply for the actor portraying Mr. Horace Gilmer that the character is “not all bad.”

But we can see by Mr. Gilmer’s actions in the play that he is a poor, lazy attorney who didn’t even bother to contruct a good case against Tom Robinson, instead relying on the racist Alabama courts of the 1930’s to give him an easy conviction. It’s only when Atticus fights back and tears apart Mr. Gilmer’s case against Tom Robinson that Mr. Gilmer is forced to be a real attorney, and we see in his shameful, racist, and borderline illegal cross examination of Tom Robinson at the end of the trial that Mr. Gilmer has no compulsions about deploying racism and prejudice to convict Tom when his back is against the wall.

Men like Mr. Horace Gilmer are, at their core, weak cowards who attained their position in life through a broken system, and in my portrayal of him it was important to show the audience that he is not a morally grey character, but perhaps more morally corrupted and evil than even Bob Ewell himself. Mr. Horace Gilmer is the perfect example of the banality of evil.”

You can see Scott Watson as Mr. Gilmer in To Kill A Mockingbird (2024) at Mill Mountain Theatre and experience this immersive production from Sept 25th - October 6th in Roanoke, Virginia on the Trinkle Mainstage.

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