Crowns

Crowns is an exhilarating evening of music and message. Emblazoned around the edge of the proscenium is the following credo: "OUR CROWNS HAVE BEEN BOUGHT AND PAID FOR: ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS WEAR THEM." The "crowns" are hats that the women in this all-black cast wear with pride, dignity, steely determination and a healthy dose of pure vanity! Through them, an entire culture is revealed, as is the psyche of the women wearing them. "We are queens and these are our crowns" they proudly state.

Delivering this message is a marvelous ensemble that includes Carmen Ruby Floyd, Harriet D. Foy, Lynda Gravitt, Janey Hubert, Ebony Jo-Ann and Virginia A Woodrullf (that night replacing the talented Lillias White) and Lawrence Clayton as the sole man. The most beautiful gospel music, delivered by David Pleasant under Linda Twine's musical direction, is interspersed throughout the production underscoring the joy and salvation music plays in the life cycle of these people.

The device in director Regina Taylor's book (based on a pictorial essay by Michael Cunningham and Ronald K. Brown) to visit these southern spokeswomen is a rebellious teenage girl, surrounded by a tragic and dangerous lifestyle in Brooklyn, New York (oh, and her hat is a baseball cap!), who is sent to live with her grandmother in the South where she and her friends reveal their societal "hat-titudes" through how, when and where they wear their hats.

There are Mother's Day hats, Church-Going hats, Funeral hats, and even hats worn in the tobacco fields. In the South of slavery and, later, segregation, the only place blacks could safely congregate was in church, hence the only chance they had to "show off." One of the "hat rules": never go bareheaded to church, and the ultimate luxury/necessity was a new hat as often as possible. Some women would not go to church unless they had a hat to be proud of. So prized were these possessions that one woman stated, "I'll lend my children before I'll lend my hat. My children know their way home." Socially, hats were worn to allure; "hats are intriguing, flirtatious" followed by a delightful demonstration of such. "Hats are like people, sometimes they are revealing/sometimes concealing." There are even special hugs in the "Hat Queen Rules" so that you don't knock of each other's hat in greeting.

On a bad-hair day, one might wear a wig under a hat despite the heat. "Hat language" is expressed in the tilt of a hat swaying to music, rocking in prayer or, brim sinisterly pulled down over the brow, glaring at a neighbor. Hats even became heirlooms.

And, in a significant statement, "it took a civil rights movement to get the hats off our heads" (they went bareheaded when protesting to protect their hats). But, to exercise their rights, they went to formerly-white department stores and bought hats they couldn't afford just to show off their new status.

When our little Brooklyn girl finally seeks acceptance in the alien society she becomes baptized, joining her sisters in attitude, and song. The effect is touching and contagious. In retrospect, this would appear to be a very slight show about hats and attitude. Its message brief, its metaphor simple. The music is not really. But packed into Crowns's 90 minutes is a gritty, powerful affirmation of the life and dignity of black women infused with the most rousing of gospel music. Hats off to a marvelous show!