The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
An updated look for ‘Crowns’ at Long Wharf
Regina Taylor’s play sports old & new church hats
Plenty can happen in 15 years. That’s why Regina Taylor seized the opportunity to scroll up “Crowns,” her play about the unique relationship that African-Americans share with the hats they wear to church.
“Crowns,” which starts performances Wednesday at Long Wharf Theatre, was quite successful when it premiered at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J. (and subsequently produced at Hartford Stage Company during its 2004-5 season). It galvanized Taylor’s national reputation as a playwright, having already enjoyed success as a performer on stage, in film and TV.
Yet Taylor, today one of the most produced dramatists at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, where she is an artistic associate, simply couldn’t leave well enough alone when Emily Mann, artistic director at the McCarter then and now, suggested Taylor revise “Crowns” for its co-production with Long Wharf.
“I thought it was a great opportunity … to take a look at it, in terms of where we are right now,” said Taylor, who directs “Crowns,” which begins preview performances Wednesday and officially opens at Long Wharf April 25.
Taylor’s revised version unfolds through the perspective of 17-year-old Yolanda (Gabrielle Beckford), who is sent from Chicago to live with her grandmother in South Carolina after her brother has been shot to death.
“At first, Yolanda thinks that she has nothing in common with these ‘hat queens,’” said Taylor, meaning woman owning at least 100 hats. “But as they start telling their stories that are tucked under the brim of these hats about weddings, funerals, baptisms, these markers in a life, these cycles that we all go through in life, she finds that she has everything in common with them. They baptize her in history in order to let her find her own unique path in this world.
“That storyline is, unfortunately, still very timely, very immediate,” said Taylor, who derived her play from Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry’s popular coffee table book of the same title. “Before, it was (from) the perspective of these ladies and how they moved her.”
Taylor invited composers Jaret Landon, Diedre Murray and Chesney Snow to weave gospel, soul and hip-hop into her uplifting story.
Taylor said she instantly recognized the characters when Mann sent her the galleys of “Crowns” before its publication.
“I was so struck because I know each and every one these ladies, even if I never met them,” Taylor said. “They’re from Darlington — I’m from Dallas, but I know each and every one of them because they are the women that helped to raise me, the women of my community as I was growing up.
“I knew ‘hat queens.’ Though at the time I was gifted with this project, I knew very little about the history, the tradition, of African-American women wearing hats to church,” she said. “I had to research this idea of adorning oneself for worship, which is something that crossed over the ocean from Africa into this new land, that survived through slavery: that this is an adornment to display that spirit. I had to learn about that in starting to even figure out how I would enter creating this piece.
“When I was telling my mother about this project, she took me through her closet,” Taylor said. “She wasn’t a ‘hat queen’ (in) that she didn’t own over 100 hats, but she owned a lot of hats. We spent that afternoon into the evening with her telling me the story of each and every one of her hats and each hat had many stories, these markers in her life. And I made discoveries about my mother, things I never knew about her. She was telling me these stories upon stories about her history, those things that were important to her, those events that may have changed her. And I was going, ‘Ohhh, that’s what it’s about!”
Taylor said she treated herself to her first “crown” at her play’s premiere at The McCarter 15 years ago.
“I remember that hat very well,” she said. “I thought it was quite splendid, and represented who I thought I was. It was a black felt hat with a wide brim, iridescent feathers that moved when I moved. It was the first hat I ever bought and that was also the hat I wore to my mother’s funeral. So it started collecting. I have several hats now as I collected hats along the way with the many openings of ‘Crowns,’ where people have gifted me with hats, as well as those hats that I have bought.”
Still basking in the glow of the warm and raucous reception that her newly shaped “Crowns” received at The McCarter, Taylor said that the greatest pleasure she takes from her renewed endeavor is the performances.
“Each of the individuals on that stage is amazing,” said Taylor, whose play runs through May 13 at Long Wharf. “They give their hearts to this piece, to their characters. They are real flesh and blood with great, great spirits, deep spirits. I am moved each and every time I see them, I experience them, I witness them. The piece is joyful. It is about endurance. It is about community. It is about how you move on, even through dark times, to be able to underline that in this production and to have it be joy-filled. I am very happy about that, and also that it is about bringing communities together, no matter what race, to have this inter-generational gathering point of experience and discussion.
“I think certainly my mission has been to be able to reinvestigate this piece in terms of where we are at this present moment, with looking at our youth, reclaiming that youth,” she said. “They are the ones that are going to continue on and be shamelessly hopeful in what their future might hold.”