Theatre Preview: Crowns

Ten years ago, photographer Michael Cunningham started taking black and white pictures of church hats, fascinated by the way that they regally rested on women’s heads. He was on to something. An exhibition followed the same year, followed by a book called Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats. The exhibition toured, finally reaching the Gibbes in 2006, and an off-Broadway stage version wasn’t far behind.

Now the Crowns play will be performed by the Footlight Players, directed by Henry Clay Middleton (seen last summer co-starring in Piccolo Spoleto’s Denmark Vesey: Insurrection), and it’s not all about the hats.

Crowns features six women who are amalgamations taken from the 50 subjects in the book. Refreshingly, all but one of them are in their 40s or older, providing some strong acting opportunities for older local actresses. But a focal point is the youngest character, Yolanda, who is sent from Brooklyn to South Carolina to get in touch with her Southern heritage. There she encounters church life, Gospel music, soliloquizing grandmas and an awful lot of hats.

If a live aspect of Crowns sounds familiar, that could be because the CSO Gospel Choir performed selections from its repertoire at the Gibbes during the exhibition in 2006 – deemed a highly successful event by the museum of art. With Cunningham’s work growing in popularity, surely it won’t be long before we see Crowns: The Millinery Musical.

SHOW DATES: Jan. 25-26, 8 p.m., Sun., Jan. 27, 3 p.m., Mon., Jan. 28, 3 p.m., Thu., Jan. 31, 8 p.m., Feb. 1-2, 8 p.m. and Feb. 7-9, 8 p.m.

PRICES: $25/adults, $22/seniors, $15/students

ADDRESS: Footlight Players Theatre, 20 Queen St., Downtown Charleston, SC, (843) 722-4487

WEBSITE: http://www.footlightplayers.net/