McCarter Theatre
Education Department
presents

A Teacher Resource Guide by Laurie Sales with additional materials by Steven Michaels and Janice Paran Designed by Francine Schiffman

Offered in conjunction with the McCarter Theatre production
October 15, 2002 - November 3, 2002

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• Core Curriculum Standards
• Introduction
• Plot Description
• Character Profiles
• Glossary of Terms

• "Talking Hats" by Janice Paran
• Talking with Janice Paran and Regina Taylor
• Sundance Institute
• Spotlight on Design: Costumes

• The Heritage of African-American Traditions
• The History of the Hat
• The Music of Crowns

• Regina Taylor
• Ronald K. Brown
• Craig Marberry and Michael Cunningham
• Who's in the Cast

• Mae Saunders: A Milliner Remembers
• "Big Hats and Black-Church Tradition" by Terry Mattingly
• Related Materials

• Pre-Show Questions
• After the Show
• Enhance the Performance

The Visual and Performing Arts are considered Core Curriculum areas for the New Jersey State Department of Education. This production of Crowns is designed to give your students exposure to the specific Core Curriculum Standards listed below.

Crowns and Curriculum Standards

This production of Crowns and related study materials will provide students with specific knowledge and skills to address the following Core Curriculum Content Standards in the Arts:

Crowns is also designed to address the following Core Curriculum Standards in Language Arts Literacy:

Crowns, a new play with music and dance, is being brought to life for the first time by McCarter Theatre in a co-production with New York's Second Stage Theatre. Adapted from the book by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry, Crowns has been a much anticipated event for over two years.

"When I first got a peek at the photos and essays for the book, Crowns, celebrating black women in their church hats," says McCarter Theatre Artistic Director Emily Mann, "I knew I wanted to bring its stories to our audiences. The triple threat actress, playwright and director, Regina Taylor, is the perfect match for the material, and we've been readying her adaptation for its world premiere. Add choreography by Ron Brown and a gospel-rich score, and you're on a roll. This homegrown project, utterly essential and thoroughly life-giving, gives voice to community, which is the life blood of our theater."

Within the pages of this guide, you and your students will find information that puts the play in a cultural context as well as a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the artists and the process of bringing this unique piece to life. Each piece of material has been carefully selected to help enrich your theater experience and engage your students' interests in every aspect of this theatrical journey.

Throughout this Guide you will find suggested topics for class discussion as well as in-class activities and study questions to consider both before and after you see the production. These questions are collected at the end of the Resource Guide, but are referenced throughout the Guide for your convenience.

Unlike plays that follow a sequential story or "plot line," Crowns weaves together a variety of stories from different characters, time periods, and perspectives that, when integrated with music and dance, create a tapestry of voices that transcend time and place. The essential story of Crowns is that of a young African American girl trying to figure out her identity, her place in the world, and her place in her own culture.

Yolanda is a tough girl from Brooklyn who is proud of her status as a true New Yorker. She feels at home with the rhythm of the Brooklyn streets but when her brother Teddy is shot, Yolanda's mother sends her to South Carolina to live with her gradmother. Yolanda begins a journey that will link her own experiences to the stories of her relatives, her history and her people.

Mother Shaw, Yolanda's grandmother, welcomes her granddaughter into a circle of female spirits who come to life as Wanda, Mabel, Jeanette and Velma. As we watch them prepare for church on a Sunday morning, they tell stories of their own connections to hats as a part of the rich African-American heritage, but Yolanda defends her affinity for hats and headwear as "her own thing."

Processing to church, Yolanda reluctantly wears a hat that Mother Shaw has bought for her while the other women debate the rules of proper hat wearing, including such admonitions as, "Don't let people touch the hat. Don't let people knock the hat. Don't let people hug too close."

The Morning Service begins and Mother Shaw officiates over the congregation. The spirit of the service temporarily transforms the space. Shadows of the past take the place of stained glass windows and church pews, and echoes of ring shouts and slave songs envelop Yolanda. She is lost in the spirit for the moment, but pulls away to perform her own "rebel dance," a movement that evokes the urban landscape of her Brooklyn home and her homesickness. She dreams of challenging the church women, of wearing her brother's Wu-Tang baseball cap to church. In response, the congregation tries to embrace Yolanda with their message of everlasting love, and their own experiences of loss. Husbands, fathers, and brothers play significant roles in these stories. Yolanda tells her story last, detailing the events of her brother's death and of his funeral. She remembers him with sadness and longing, and the women who have surrounded her from the start of her journey, open their arms to her and soothe her with song.

In a final movement, Yolanda is baptized into the legacy of these women and all the ancestors who have gone before her. She is initiated, welcomed and accepted into the fold as the women's stories drift back to support her. She recognizes the traces of her own ancestry within herself as she declares, "The more I study Africa, the more I see that African Americans do very African things without even knowing it. Adorning the head is one of those things... whether it's the intricate braids or the distinct hairstyles or the beautiful hats we wear on Sundays. We just know inside that we're queens. And these are the crowns we wear."

By Janice Paran

In her forward to the book Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats, Maya Angelou describes the ritual that an African American woman is likely to follow in getting ready for church on Sunday morning, a routine that more often than not culminates in selecting THE HAT.

The phenomenon of The Hat, or more precisely, of black women in church hats, is what prompted photographer Michael Cunningham and journalist Craig Marberry to become collaborators on Crowns (Doubleday, 2000), their loving homage to the cherished African American custom that fuses faith and fashion. The book's stunning black-and-white portraiture and riveting oral histories, spiked with a generous dose of "hattitude," inspired the playwright Regina Taylor, in turn, to adapt the material to the stage. Crowns, directed by Taylor and co-produced by McCarter and New York's Second Stage Theatre, receives its world premiere at McCarter beginning October 15, 2002. A number of special events are planned in conjunction with the production, including a Crowns exhibit at Ellarslie, the Trenton City Museum, from October 4th, and a post-performance panel discussion on October 20 whose participants will include Regina Taylor and the book's creators. In addition, many of the women featured in the book will travel to Princeton for the opening weekend.

For nearly everyone involved in Crowns' journey from page to stage, the process has been a particularly joyous, not to mention personal, undertaking. Both Cunningham and Marberry are based in North Carolina, where church hats are taken seriously, and where Cunningham had no trouble finding willing subjects to photograph. Two months into his project, he showed some of the portraits to his journalist friend Craig Marberry, who suspected that beneath the hats lay a gold mine of oral histories, and signed on to the undertaking. "I saw that my challenge," Marberry later said, "was to elicit from these hat queens stories as individual and compelling as the hats they wear."

Before the pair had even found a publisher, Marberry slipped some of the material to McCarter's artistic director Emily Mann (who happened to be visiting Greensboro, North Carolina in 1999 for the anniversary of the Greensboro Massacre, the subject of one of her plays) on the hunch that it might translate well to the stage. Mann agreed, and in short order approached the versatile Regina Taylor, an actress and writer known for her starring role in the television series I'll Fly Away and for a number of original plays (including Drowning Crow, her highly acclaimed adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull, seen last season at Chicago's Goodman Theatre), to do the adaptation.

Taylor didn't hesitate for a moment. "When I first looked at the photographs and read the stories," she recalled, "I felt a deep sense of recognition - a sense of where I came from, a sense of the women who helped raise me, a sense of the community that was provided by aunts and neighbors and by the women who worshipped in the church I grew up in. There was very much a feeling of knowing all of these women at different points in my life. That was very exciting to me."

Taylor spent the next two years devising a theatrical language for Crowns, trying it out in stages with readings and workshops along the way, including a three-week workshop this July at Utah's Sundance Theatre Lab, the new play development wing of Robert Redford's famed Sundance Institute. "I envisioned a Gospel music-driven piece," she explained, "a crazy-quilt of music and movement and storytelling that takes us through the rituals of a Sunday in the South with characters breaking out of the framework to deliver 'arias,' direct addresses to the audience that may start in the Sunday church service but jump off into memories of life experiences in different times and different places." The text of Taylor's adaptation - whose characters are composites of the women in the book - is more like an opera libretto than a stand-alone piece of dramatic literature, and as she delved more deeply into a music and movement vocabulary for it, aided by choreographer Ronald K. Brown, its resonances deepened. Crowns is an entertaining and celebratory salute to a stand-up-and-be-counted African American tradition, but as its stories, shapes and sounds remind us, that tradition evolved out of a long legacy of pain, pride, self-reliance and survival.

Crowns is full of hilarious "hat queen" testimonials from women who own 30 or 50 or 100 hats and don't care who knows it, but for every bravura hat queen turn, there's an intimate story of a childhood memory, a personal turning-point, a private grief. In giving voice to such experiences, in recounting the truths the hats trumpet or translate or hide, Crowns never loses sight of two essentials. The first is that for African American women, hats are more than a fashion statement (though they are also defiantly that): they are outward expressions of faith, symbols of cultural continuity, badges of honor. "Our crowns have already been bought and paid for," James Baldwin wrote. "All we have to do is wear them."

The second core value in Taylor's approach to the material is that Crowns, for all its culture-specific detail, is not a private party. "What I hope audiences will take away from Crowns," Taylor noted early in her work on it, "is the experience of people from different backgrounds coming into the theater as a community and being touched by their own recollections. I hope the piece will open up other doors of experience, doors people don't expect to walk through." Hats need not be removed before entering.

Janice Paran is the Resident Dramaturg and Director of Play Development for McCarter Theatre.

On a break between rehearsals, design meetings and appointments with the media, Crowns dramaturg Janice Paran and playwright and director Regina Taylor took a few moments to speak with the McCarter Education staff about the experience of developing and working on Crowns. Their thoughts on the process offer an insider's perspective on this unique project.

ED: What is it about Crowns that made it appealing to McCarter's artistic staff?

JP: A number of things - the beauty of the photographs, of course, but also the pull of the women's stories, which are vivid, personal, entertaining and endearing. Reading them really invites you into a wonderful segment of African American culture.

ED: What are some of the key elements that enable the stories on the page to make a successful theatre event?

JP: Well, there's plenty of powerful storytelling there, which is the first ingredient of a theatrical event. And these are stories that are meant to be shared, because they are rooted in larger experiences - for these women, church hats represent much more than a fashion statement. The hats are emblems of tradition, of triumph over adversity, of spiritual expression. They're meant for public display, so the hats and their wearers are well suited to the theater.

ED: You have guided the development of many new pieces for McCarter. How has the process of developing Crowns been unique?

JP: There are special challenges in adapting material from a book. You can't take too many liberties in changing your source material, but you're also aware that a book isn't a play, and that the writer must translate the idea into theatrical terms. The book itself is a collection of separate oral histories, but in the play, Regina has interwoven the stories and created a larger story that connects them. Another big difference between Crowns and many other new plays is that, in this case, the text doesn't dominate. It's important, of course, but the play also incorporates lots of music and dance, and they tell a part of the story, too.

ED: Many students are not familiar with the role of a dramaturg. Can you talk about your responsibilities to this project, both in the developmental process and in the rehearsal room?

JP: My function as a dramaturg varies from project to project, but in the case of Crowns, I've been involved since the beginning of Regina's work in adapting the original book, serving as a sounding board for her ideas and giving her feedback as the project developed. I continued in that role in the rehearsal room, along with doing quite a bit of research tracing African American customs - such as the ring shout dance in black worship - back to their African roots, since one of the subjects of Crowns is how African American culture has been passed down from generation to generation. Regina was interested in using some of that research in staging Crowns, and some of it shows up in the program for the play. My main responsibility as a dramaturg, whether on Crowns or another project, is to help the director and/or playwright realize their vision of the play by providing some resources and an informed opinion about the work in progress. It's a job I love.

ED: What was your response when McCarter first approached you with this project?

RT: I was very excited because I recognize all of these women. They have a sense of community and family that I know well, and I was attracted to the power of the truthfulness of their words. I was very much compelled to bring these women to the stage.

ED: How did you come from looking at the stories that are all separate in the book to creating something with a through line?

RT: The tradition of adorning oneself for worship is something that comes from Africa. This was something that was passed down over the waters and that African Americans retain here in our church services. So when I looked at the book again within this context, I thought of church music, which harkens back over the waters to African music and I thought about the movement of ring shouts, which goes back directly to Africa. I began to consider things that are passed down in terms of African cultures, and then I followed that thread from African traditions to church traditions to how that has filtered down into all of American society. So now you have field songs, you have the blues, you have rock, you have rap, you have jazz. All of that is connected - it has a line with a definite root. So in looking at doing the play I began to look at how I could weave together the narratives, the hat stories, which reveal so much about the women and where they are going. At the same time, knowing that not everyone knows about these stories, I introduced the character of a young woman from Brooklyn who is living too fast and her brother has been shot, so her mother sends her down to Darlington, SC to live with her grandmother. That's where she is initiated into the circle. She is our surrogate through this evening and she is indoctrinated and is baptized in this history. And that's the journey that I've created.

ED: All of the stories in the book are so compelling, how did you choose which stories to include?

RT: That was very hard. It became about the arrangement of the piece and the way the stories fit into the structure. I started with a Sunday and I divided it into different parts. In the play the audience follows the course of that day even though we are going back and forth in time. We start at sun up and we have the morning ritual of getting ready for church. We have the procession to church, the morning service, a wedding, a funeral, a baptism and then a recession. So that is the structure. Then I started choosing which pieces fit into those sections. I then started grouping those pieces so that the stories in the book, from all these different women, became narrowed down to six different character types. The seventh character became the Man. And from there the voices kind of fell into place.

ED: What made you decide that the character of the Man was important to this story?

RT: I think it is important to have that male/female element. And there is a different energy to the piece with him being present. It's not the same as "girls night out" because when you introduce a male persona the energy responds and changes. I thought that dynamic was important. And, because he takes on the roles of all of the different men in these women's lives, I felt we very much needed his voice to complete the story.

ED: There are so many different artistic elements to this piece, and you are working with so many collaborators. As the director, how do you manage such an enormous collaborative piece?

RT: I think part of being a good director is knowing how to throw a good party and knowing how to invite the right people to that party. I feel fortunate to be working with inventive, imaginative collaborators and designers. So I think mainly my job is to direct the energy that these extraordinary people bring with them and then to be the glue within that.

ED: How does the fact that you are a performer, a playwright, and a director influence the work that you do?

RT: It is very schizophrenic and I keep the different parts of me separate. There are times when they overlap, when I have the director and the writer in the room at the same time and the director has to ask the writer to leave and say "Okay, weÕll talk later."

ED: What do you hope that people who see Crowns will walk out of the theatre with?

RT: Generally I hope that people will be open to seeing how this affects their own lives and how the specific stories are also universal. The piece harkens upon where you come from and what you pass down and the importance of passing something down to someone else. That passing is taken into another person and transforms his/her life, and then that person creates what was passed down anew. This is what I hope people will see in it, and it is what I hope they will be thinking about as they leave the theater.

Founded by Robert Redford and dedicated to the development of artists of independent vision and the exhibition of their new work, the Sundance Institute is celebrating its 20th Anniversary in 2001.

In 1981 Robert Redford gathered a group of colleagues and friends at Sundance, Utah to discuss new ways to enhance the artistic vitality of the American film. The result was the establishment of the Sundance Institute, dedicated to the support and development of emerging screenwriters and directors of vision, and to the national and international exhibition of new, independent dramatic and documentary films.

Since that beginning twenty years ago, the Sundance Institute has expanded its scope to include a range of programs that reflect the original mission of nurturing developing artists in a variety of disciplines and encouraging the independent spirit in both artists and their projects.

Included in its artistic vision and mission, the Institute has had a long-term commitment to contemporary playwrights and to producing theatre for youth and families. The newly redesigned Theatre Laboratory has expanded its commitment to the collaborative nature of theatre and garnered national recognition. Nearly 90 percent of the work developed at the Theatre Lab from the last four years has gone on to full production.

What's behind the way a person dresses? When a costume designer approaches a play, he or she must make choices about what pieces of clothing the characters might put on and how those characters would accessorize the outfits that they wear. The costume designer must also take into account the design of the overall production and incorporate the time period and the director's vision for the play with the colors, textures, and dimensions of the scenery and lighting. For Crowns, costume designer Emilio Sosa had to take into account the similarities and differences among the seven characters in addition to tying traditions of the past to traditions of the present. What influences from ancient African dress are evident in the characters' costumes? What is the significance of certain articles of clothing in the story of Crowns? How does the color scheme of one character complement or contrast the color of another character's costume? To address these questions, we have included a glimpse at some of the costume renderings as they are currently envisioned for the production. Though many of the details of these costumes may change before opening night, the overall concept that influences their design is an integral part of the production that you will see.

Dressing up for the glory of God has always been an important aspect of Sunday service in the African American community. Dressing up in high fashion was a source of pride for many African American women who had to wear uniforms for work six days a week. Fashion was important to these women because it symbolized their freedom and independence. By the same token, women were able to display and preserve an important part of their cultural heritage.

As stated in the Holy Bible: Corinthians (I.11.5): "But any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled brings shame upon her head, for it is one and the same thing as if she had had her head shaved." This Biblical reference demonstrates the belief that the importance of a woman covering her head in church has to do with more than just style. Hats, commonly referred to as crowns, have not only set a style for African American women, but also play a large role in a religious tradition.

African American culture retains many traditions, rites and rituals that can be traced back to the culture's ancestry in ancient Africa. At each stage of life, a culture embraces rituals that serve to commemorate the significance of passing on to another stage of life. The African American people honor their heritage with traditions that take new shape as time alters them, but that always trace back to the roots of the culture. Here are some of the ancient traditions that marked the most important events in the life of an African American.

Birth
In almost every culture the birth of a child is very important and the child is cherished. Ancient African tradition says that the name of the child will affect the rest of his or her life. Great care is taken to choose a positive, unique name that will guarantee the child a happy, healthy and successful life.

Marriage
"Broom Jumping" has become one of the most popular traditions at African American weddings. The jumping of the broom symbolizes the sweeping away of the old and welcoming the new. During slavery, when it was illegal for slaves to marry, "jumping the broom" took the place of a legal ceremony.

Wine is also very important in the marriage ceremony. There is a hierarchy to pouring the wine that is strictly followed in some African societies. Weddings are loud, lively and joyous. Instruments such as bells, drums, or horns are used to make noise in celebration. Wishes are yelled out to the bride and groom. This wish is typical: "May the spirits on high, as well as the spirits below, fill you with grace."

A libation can be one of the most dramatic parts of a wedding celebration. It may be done at the ceremony and again at the reception. It is meaningful and colorful, and offers a moment to pause and reflect on the importance of family. It is an important act of remembrance that helps young people to reclaim their family heritage. Because it is prayer, it can evoke powerful emotions and feelings of good wishes.

Death
Traditionally, African Americans consider death to be a critical part of the life cycle, manifested through the blending of African traditions with Western Christian funeral practices. African Americans often insisted that the funerals be held at night. Also, the funeral often included a long procession in which all of the people would pass by the grave, shouting, chanting and singing.

Other practices observed in some African American funeral services include the presence of flower girls (the female counterpart of a pallbearer) who offer special attention to grieving family members and "Nurses" who are sometimes present to aid a mourner who becomes overwhelmed with emotion. Musical performances are presented by a choir and/or loved ones. A large assortment of flowers, which decorate the coffin is common, as is the decoration of the grave with the deceased's belongings, a holdover from the African belief in a spiritual life.

The most distinguishing characteristic in African American funeral services is keening, the dramatic expression of sorrow. At a traditional African American funeral, it is common for grieving family members and friends to cry and wail at the loss of their loved one. In some cases, if family members do not react this way, others assume that the deceased was not loved and his death is not mourned.

Music is an esssential ingredient interwoven into the stories and the storytelling of Crowns. For the characters in the play music functions as a way to tie the past to the present and as a way for them to commune with the spirits, with the Lord and with their ancestry. In order to fully appreciate the significance of music within this world (as well as the importance of the specific musical pieces included in the text and in McCarter's production) some knowledge of African and African American musical traditions is helpful. The following is a brief overview of some of the various styles of music you will experience in Crowns as well as an introduction to a few of the rituals that were influential in the development of African American music.

The contributions of African-Americans to the history of music in the United States began with the arrival of the first Africans on the mainland in 1619. Although they were sold into slavery, stripped of their possessions, clamped into irons, and wedged into foul vessels to make the dreaded "middle passage" from Africa to America, they nevertheless brought to the new land their memories of the rich music and dance traditions from the lands of their ancestors. They remembered the importance of music in the West African way of life - how almost every activity was accompanied by music appropriate to the occasion and how special kinds of music were provided for festivals - and they continued these practices in the New World.

FIELD HOLLER:
The field holler is a kind of African American music originating in the early days of American slavery. A kind of work song, used as a form of communication among black plantation workers in the South, the field holler made use of call and response.

RING SHOUT:
The ring shout was one of the features of slave Christianity that made the faith so powerful for the enslaved Africans and so foreign to European cultures. Enslaved Africans rarely had their own church buildings, so they usually had to meet in homes or outdoors, in the woods. As one former slave recalled, "When dark come, de men folks would hang up a wash-pot, bottom up'ards, in de little brush church-house us had, so's it would catch de noise an' de oberseer couldn' hear us singin' and shoutin'." While singing and moving the body were an integral part of worship, the seeming chaos and abandon with which the ring shout was conducted were frightening to owners who wanted complete control over the slaves. The ring shout was not, however, all chaos. It was actually a gratifying combination of emotional release and controlled community behavior, and it is directly linked to the counter-clockwise circle dances of African Spiritual expression and ancestor worship.

SPIRITUALS:
A spiritual is a religious song made famous by the African Americans of the Southern United States. Spirituals are emotional songs that have a strong rhythm. A leader sometimes sings one or two lines alone, and a chorus joins in the refrain. Spiritual singers often emphasize the rhythm by clapping their hands. Slaves based most of their spirituals upon characters and stories from the Bible. Many slaves thought of themselves as modern children of Israel and sought freedom from bondage. Well-known spirituals include "Go Down, Moses," "Deep River," and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

BLUES:
Blues developed in America from the various musical expressions of African Americans. The blues are an extremely flexible type of music, and various musicians have created individual styles of performing them. Many blues lyrics reflect loneliness or sorrow, but others present a humorous or defiant reaction to life's troubles. As for its exact origins, blues may have developed after the American Civil War from short solo calls and wails called "field hollers." Blind Lemon Jefferson and Mississippi John Hurt were well-known singers of country blues.

JAZZ:
Jazz music has often been called the only art form to originate in the United States. The history of jazz began in the late 1800s when a new form of music grew from a combination of influences, including African American music, African rhythms, American band traditions and instruments, and European harmonies and forms. The earliest jazz was performed by African Americans who had little or no training in Western music. During its history, jazz has absorbed influences from the folk and classical music of Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world.

RAP:
Rap is a form of popular music that is generally spoken or chanted at a fast pace rather than sung. Rap is performed over musical accompaniment that emphasizes rhythm rather than melody. Often this accompaniment consists of short segments of earlier recorded music combined in new patterns. Rap music first developed in the mid 1970s in New York City, and soon spread to other urban areas, primarily among African American teen-agers. At its earliest stages, the biggest inspiration for rap came from disc jockeys in Jamaica who would talk, or toast, over recorded music they played in clubs.

Regina Taylor played the pivotal role of Lilly Harper in the critically acclaimed series I'll Fly Away, which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series and an NAACP Image Award. She recently received the Women in Film Gracie Allen Award for her portrayal of Anita Hill in the television film Strange Justice.

While attending Southern Methodist University, Taylor made her professional acting debut in the CBS television film Crisis at Central High. Her additional television credits include the series Law & Order, the films Cora Unashamed and Making the Case for Murder: The Howard Beach Story and, on CBS, the mini-series Children of the Dust.

Her feature film credits include The Negotiator, Courage Under Fire, A Family Thing, Lean on Me, Losing Isaiah and Clockers.

Taylor was the first black woman to play Juliet in Romeo and Juliet on Broadway. Her other Broadway credits include As You Like It and Macbeth. She has appeared off-Broadway and regionally in numerous productions including Machinal and A Map of the World at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, The Illusion at the New York Theatre Workshop, and The Tempest, for which she received a Dramalogue Award. Taylor also starred in the off-Broadway production Jar the Floor at the Second Stage Theater in New York.

A Distinguished Artistic Associate of Chicago's Goodman Theater, Taylor collaborated on and appeared in the play Millennium Mambo, which premiered at New YorkÕs Signature Theatre in early 2001. As a playwright, Taylor was honored by the American Critics' Association for Oo-Bla-Dee. Drowning Crow, Taylor's adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull, was produced last season at the Goodman. She also wrote the stage production of A Night in Tunisia, which was performed during the 2000 Shakespeare Festival, last season at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and is currently running at George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, NJ.

Ronald K. Brown Brooklyn born, Brown has worked with and learned from Jennifer Muller/The Works, Mary Anthony Dance Theatre/PHOENIX, Judith Jamison, Bessie Schönberg and Ann Carlson. As a guest artist, he has taught contemporary dance at institutions such as: NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Ohio State University, Koteba Ensemble d'Abidjan and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. Brown's choreography has been commissioned by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Philadanco, African American Dance Ensemble, Def Dance Jam Workshop, Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, Cinque Folkloric Dance Theatre, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Jennifer Muller/THE WORKS and Jeune Ballet d'Afrique Noire. Brown has received the American Dance Festival's 1991 Humphrey/Weidman/Limon Award, fellowships from the Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts and a 1998 New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie). Brown is the Director and Choreographer for Ronald K. Brown/Evidence. Incorporated in 1996, the company has presented work since 1985, performing in New York at: Performance Space 122, Dance Theater Workshop, Aaron Davis Hall, Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church and for Movement Research's Judson Memorial Church Monday Night Series. Evidence has also been seen at numerous venues and festivals in the U.S. and abroad including: Lyon/Biennale de la Danse, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, National Black Arts Festival, Exit Festival and Colorado Dance Festival.

Craig Marberry is a native of Chicago who now lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. For nine years, he has owned Info Video, an award-winning video production company with clients including America Express and USDA. Prior to starting his business, Marberry was a television reporter for six years. In addition, he has written articles for publications including the Washington Post and Essence magazine. A graduate of Morehouse College, Marberry studied abroad in Scotland and Jamaica before attending Columbia University, where he received a master's degree in journalism. Marberry is also the grandson of the late Louis Henry Ford, former Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ.

Michael Cunningham was born in Landover, Maryland, and fell in love with photography at the age of 12. A commercial photographer for over 10 years, his clients include advertising agencies, banks, public relations firms, magazines, and book publishers throughout the southeast. His personal projects are all done in black and white; this allows him to express what is in his soul. "Black and White photography is very personal," he says "and reaches deep inside of the viewer; making them study the photograph for what it is outside of pretty colors." Two of his photographs are currently on loan to the Smithsonian's Anacostia Museum, and his works have been featured in the New York Times and Ebony. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

"I used to go to church and look around at all the hats and see which one of 'em wasn't mine. After the service you better believe I was on my way to convincing those women that what they needed was a Mae Saunders hat. My mother used to say she wasn't sure if I was going to church to praise the Lord or just to see who was wearing my hats!"

Mae Saunders was once a well-known milliner who spent most of her hat-making years working for a high fashion designer in New York City. Her home and her roots however, are in Trenton, New Jersey where she still lives. At eighty-seven years old, Mae has a wealth of stories that include opening her first hat shop in the downtown Trenton business district, passing a hat making "test" that earned her her position in New York, and going to the movies as a child where she would take in the latest hat styles of the silver screen in hopes that she could have similar hats made for herself. Saunders retains an openness and charm that undoubtedly made her popular with her customers over the years. Though she was the only black designer on the staff of "Joseph's hats" she tells us that she never had any problems with customers or co-workers because of racial issues. In fact, it seems that Ms. Saunders was a favorite of many of the high-class, high-power customers who relied on Joseph's for their headwear.

by Terry Mattingly

WASHINGTON - Viewed from their balconies, the pews in traditional black churches looked like waves of polished wood curving down to the pulpit and, through decades of Sundays, the crests were topped by graceful rows of women's hats.

Before the sea change of the 1960s, it was much more common for women to cover their heads in congregations of all kinds. Nevertheless, visitors would have to have been blind not to see that there was more to the hats in black churches than mere fashion. "This is part of part of a distinction between the work-day world and that whole Sunday-go-to-meeting tradition," said Gail S. Lowe, curator and principal researcher for a new Smithsonian Institution exhibit on African-American faith. "If your whole week was ruled by uniforms and aprons and work clothes and boots, then you kept one good suit and you kept one really nice dress.

"And if the culture says that ladies are supposed to cover their heads, and the culture certainly said that the Bible said you were supposed to do that, then that meant you needed a hat. And if you needed a hat and it was Sunday, then you needed a SUNDAY hat. So the hats became more and more elaborate, to say the least."

On one level, this symbolized reverence for God, said Lowe. It also displayed respect for the church and for the authority of elders. But there was one more level to this tradition: a hunger for beauty and for self-respect in the generations leading up to the Civil Rights Movement.

A display of Sunday hats is merely one detail in the mosaic of this latest offering by the Smithsonian's Center for African American History and Culture. However, similar themes of tradition and change appear throughout the aisles of the exhibit, which is entitled "Speak to my Heart: Communities of Faith and Contemporary African American Life." It will remain open through the spring of 2000 and the museum plans a traveling version of the exhibition.

One of the most striking items is a set of glass-and-brass doors from Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston - doors that had once served as the entrance to a segregated movie theater. Another display features bricks and a burned lamppost from First Baptist in Centralia, Va., one of several churches hit by arsonists in the 1990s.

But most of the museum cases feature more subtle signs of what has changed and what has stayed the same - from the formal white gloves on a statue of a deaconess to the flowing robes of liturgical dancers and female pastors. "Speak To My Heart" also covers a wide range of religious traditions, including the worship and work of Muslims, Black Hebrews and others with African roots.

While black-church life has certainly changed in recent decades, it's impossible to predict which changes are permanent and which traditions will simply evolve into new forms, said Lowe. The key is that black Americans are, like so many others in this culture, picking and choosing which spiritual rites and symbols speak to them on a highly personal level.

"My generation doesn't wear hats. Why? Because we hated all of that," said Lowe, who attends a progressive Christian Methodist Episcopal congregation. "We understood that women wore hats because of modesty and because of the traditional values of the community. So we all said, 'That has to go. We're not going to do it.' " But most of the pastors' wives, or "first ladies" of the congregations, kept the tradition alive, along with the revered older women often known as the "mothers of the church." And then the cultural search for African traditions led some women to try wearing forms of headdresses. Many Muslim women continued to wear simple head coverings. A few younger women simply decided gloves and hats were fashionable.

"Today, you may see hats or you may not see hats," said Lowe. "The key is that this is all a matter of personal choice. The theology is no longer there to back up the tradition. The links to the past are almost gone. Whether that's good or bad depends on your point of view."

Terry Mattingly writes the nationally syndicated "On Religion" column for the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C.

The following books and websites were used in the creation of the guide and are sources of further information about the themes and content of Crowns.

Arnoldi, Mary Jo and Christine M. Kreamer. Crowning Achievements. University of California Los Angeles, Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995.

Chafe, William H. (ed.) Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life In the Segregated South. New Press, 2001.

Cunningham, Michael and Craig Marberry. Crowns. Algonquin Books, 2001.

Flores-Pena, Ysamur and Roberta J. Evanchuk. Santeria Garments and Altars. University Press of Mississippi, June 1994.

Mbiti, John S. Introduction to African Religion. Heinemann, 1991.

Mbiti, John S. African Religions and Philosophy. Heinemann, 1992.

Parrinder, Eward Geoffrey. West African Religion: A Study of the Beliefs and Practices of the Akan, Ewe, Yoruba, Ibo and Kindered Peoples. London: Epworth, 1969.

Taylor, Regina. The Ties That Bind: A Pair of One Act Plays. Dramatic Publishing.

Websites:

Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of African Art

Archives of African American Music and Culture
Indiana University

America's Jazz Heritage
Internet Exhibit by the Smithsonian Institute

African Genesis Presents: African American Music
African American Music Presented by Smith/McIver.

The Hat Site

The Creation of Spirituality

1. Share the Crowns book with your class. Discuss what themes they find in the book that link the various stories together and how they anticipate these themes might manifest in the stage play.

2. Use the "music" section of this guide to introduce your students to some of the musical styles that will be employed in the performance of Crowns. Ask your students to bring in examples of each of these styles.

3. Using the book as a model, have your students each choose a picture of him/herself and write a one-page anecdote that is related to a memory that the picture evokes. Read them aloud and discuss the elements of compelling stories.

4. Create a list with your class of traditions or customs in the students' own lives that have been passed down from generation to generation. Encourage the students to find examples of traditions that they resist as well as traditions they embrace.

5. Pass out the brief character profile that is included in this guide. Divide the students into small groups and have each group come up with a list of gestures, movements and lines that they associate with each character profile. Either discuss or have the students act out what they have created.

After the show, ask your students the following questions.

1. How was this production close to what you expected? How was it different? What elements of the production were most surprising?

2. Was there a central character in Crowns? If so, who do you think it was and why?

3. List the different elements of design and performance that played an important role in the production. How was each element crucial to the story of the play? How did each design or performance element link the characters in the play to their ancestry?

4. What did the play teach you or show you that you were not familiar with before? What parts of the story were most like your own life? What parts were most foreign? How did this affect your experience at the theatre?

5. What were the central events of Crowns? How were these events important in the lives of the characters?

6. The wearing of hats is a unifying custom for the characters in Crowns. If you were to create a play about your own community or culture, what unifying customs would be important in your production?

1. Create a book of collected photographs and stories of your students. Ask each student to make one contribution and to keep the story anonymous. Using the pictures as a guide, match the story to the picture and the student. Discuss the clues that link an image to a story.

2. Select a variety of quotes from Crowns and ask your students to find the subtext, or underlying message, of each quote. Have the students consider the point of view of the person who is speaking and who the line may be spoken to.

3. Discuss rituals of birth, marriage, death and worship with your class. Working in groups, have the class research the background of some of these rituals and share their findings with the rest of the class.