Regina Taylor's coming of age story, at the McCarter Theatre Center through April 1, follows a girl who finds herself with the help of her grandmother and the older woman's hat-wearing, church-going friends.
When playwright Regina Taylor saw an early edition of the 2000 coffee table book “Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats,” she flipped through the pages thinking, “I know this woman, and this woman, and this woman…”
“These were women I’d never met, but they reminded me of the women who raised me,” said Taylor, who is also a Golden Globe award-winning actress perhaps best known for her role in the TV series “I’ll Fly Away.” “They were hat queens, making a statement, wearing crowns that represented their unique spirits.”
Inspired by the book, Taylor created the musical the musical “Crowns,” the so-called “Gospel musical” which premiered at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre Center in the fall of 2002. Now the show has returned to McCarter, with Taylor directing a tweaked 15th anniversary revival production running through April 1.
“Crowns” is a coming-of-age story centering on 17-year-old Yolanda, who is sent to live with her grandmother in South Carolina after her brother is shot and killed on the Chicago streets. The teen is taken in not only by her relatives but her grandmother’s extended church family who always wear hats to Sunday religious services out of respect.
As the original book notes, “Countless black women would rather attend church naked than hatless. For these women, a church hat, flamboyant as it may be, is no mere fashion accessory; it’s a cherished African American custom…”
“These hats carry history, the memories of weddings, baptisms, funerals, these markers in life that are universal, that we all pass through, that unite us,” Taylor said. “They share the stories of their lives with this young woman to bring her into the fold so she knows where she’s from and where she can go from here. The piece is about passing on that legacy.”
Yolanda learns that when her great-grandmother was a student at Bennett College, she balked at the school’s requirement that she wear a dress, pantyhose and hat off campus.
When she breaks that rule, she learns the most rebellious thing she can do is to follow it, because it is a way of showing that she is worthy of the respect often-denied African-Americans.
“It is making a statement, being a rebel, by wearing a hat, to wear that crown, to be the queen that you are,” Taylor said.
The show’s music includes church hymns but also has African rhythms. It has roots “in ocean waves,” Taylor said, from the field hollers sung by enslaved Africans to jazz to spiritual and gospel, through R&B and hip-hop.
“The music of the show is a tapestry woven with the threads of the roots of African American music,” Taylor said.
McCarter also partnered with the Arts Council of Princeton to create a photo exhibition of local women wearing church hats by Trenton-based photographers Bentrice Jusu and S. Bola Okoya.
Arts Council President Taneshia Nash Laird, who suggested the collaboration and whose photo is in the exhibit, said she thought it would help the theater with its community outreach goals and help her group expand its reach. The photos are on display at multiple locations, including the Arts Council’s gallery, on the second floor of the Princeton Public Library and at McCarter.
Photographer Jusu, who was only 10 when she began photographing weddings with her father, said the project was “about lineage building and a way to pay honor to these women.”
“With the hats, I get a chance to depict history,” Jusu said. “I get to contribute to the story.”
CROWNS
March 13 – April 1
McCarter Theatre Center
91 University Place, Princeton
Tickets: $ 25-75, available online at www.mccarter.org. Natalie Pompilio is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. She can be reached at nataliepompilio@yahoo.com. Find her on Twitter @nataliepompilio. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.