Hats A Key To Culture In ‘Crowns’
“Crowns” is in production through June 10.
Courtesy of Dominion Entertainment
They’re meant to be eye-catching statements of self-expression and exuberance. The hats on the six African-American women at the center of the musical “Crowns” also tell a story.
As playwright Regina Taylor put it, “hats reveal and they conceal.”
The play is based on the book “Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats” by photographer Michael Cunningham and journalist Craig Marberry and was adapted for theater in 2002.
The show is onstage now at the Southwest Fulton Arts Center led by Atlanta theatre powerhouse Terry Burrell, who plays Mabel, the “first lady” of her church. In the show, a young woman comes to town to stay with her aunt after her brother is killed in Brooklyn, and finds herself at odds with the more traditional, older women of the church.
Burrell says that hats are a connection to black history.
“Church was the only place where slaves were allowed to meet,” she says, explaining that hats were a way to show status and “a sense of pride.”
“The individual voices of these women and their stories,” says Dominion Entertainment artistic director Robert Connor, “really shows the broader stroke of African-American women and their stories and their voices.”
“Crowns” is in production through June 10.
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