Crowns

TheatreWorks, the Peninsula’s professional theatre company, presents Regina Taylor’s musical with “hattitude,” Crowns in San Francisco, following an extended run in Mountain View. Anthony J. Haney directs.

A woman’s hat speaks long before its wearer utters a word. Adapted from Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry’s book Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats by playwright/actress Regina Taylor, Crowns is an uplifting tribute to the unique cultural phenomenon that fuses faith with fashion. Part revival meeting and part fashion show, this extraordinary, hip-swaying musical raises the temperature and the roof to deliver the glorious sounds of gospel music sung, stomped, and testified from the heart. Reaching from slavery in the United States back to Africa, Crowns tells the story of Yolanda, a street-smart kid from Brooklyn sent to live with her grandmother in South Carolina after her beloved brother is murdered. Through soul-stirring songs and down home stories, Yolanda’s grandmother and women friends, who all wear one-of-a-kind hat creations that celebrate their personal beauty, help Yolanda find inner strength and her own unique voice in the world.