In “Crowns,” bonnets, brims and bows are no mere adornment. “Hats were a sign of status for Black women,” says Wanda (Erica Richardson), adding, “Sometimes they reveal, and sometimes they conceal.”
Hats are duty in the gospel- and hip-hop-infused play, now in a Center Repertory Company production. They’re heritage and self-expression, helmets for battle and weapons of flirtation. They set the pecking order and write social norms: “The only person who’d touch a woman’s hat is someone who doesn’t wear hats,” says Mabel (Phaedra Tillery Boughton).
Regina Taylor’s 2002 play, which adapts the book “Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats” by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry, surveys in a series of vignettes the turbans, caps, scarves and pillbox hats of different corners of Black America and what they say about the women wearing them: Underneath, says Velma (Constance Jewell Lopez), “there’s a lot of joy and a lot of sorrow.”