Crowning achievement: 'Crowns' gets its regional premiere Friday at SLCC's Grand Theatre
Still, Taylor knows her church. She knows the hymns and she knows the way the people move when they sing, and she knows the kind of advice the older women gave to youngsters like herself, back in the 1960s and '70s. Taylor has some idea of what was in the hearts of the women who wore those pretty hats.
So when Taylor was offered the chance to write a script about hats, to turn a photo book into a musical play, she didn't hesitate. She went right to work on "Crowns."
Taylor comes to Utah on Friday for the regional premiere of her play at the Grand Theatre at Salt Lake Community College's South City Campus. Her trip is sponsored by the Sundance Playwriting Laboratory.
In coming back to Utah, she comes full circle, Taylor says. She workshopped this play at the Sundance Theatre Lab in the summer of 2002. "Crowns" played in New York that fall and went on to become one of the country's most widely produced plays.
Richard Scott, who directs the Grand Theatre's production of "Crowns," says he's had his eye on this play. And not just because it is a collection of stories about black women and thus is a good choice to run for the Martin Luther King holiday. On the contrary, Scott says, he values this play because it makes everyone appreciate their own family's history.
The structure of the play has been challenging to direct, Scott says. There is music, but he wouldn't go so far as to call the play a musical. There are also big blocks of narrative.
Speaking to the Desert Morning News from her home in Los Angeles earlier this week, Taylor explained how the script came about and also talked of her own history.
As she grew up, she discovered she enjoyed writing. In fact, when she started out at Southern Methodist University, she was going to be a journalist. Then she took an acting class and changed her major.
Before she'd even graduated, Taylor was hired to act in a movie, "Crisis at Central High." That story of the integration of public schools in the South came out in 1981 and starred Joanne Woodward.
Taylor ended up in New York. "Starving and paying my dues," she says. Her acting career eventually took off, and she kept on writing until that career took off, too. The first script she worked on at Sundance was in 1998. That play, "OO-BLA-Dee," won a best play award from the American Theatre Critics Association.
For the last decade, Taylor has worked for the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. She considers that theater her home, she says. She also has a close association with Emily Mann, the artistic director of the McCarter Theatre in New York.
It was Mann who was offered the chance to try to make a play out of a book of photos and oral interviews by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry. Mann called Taylor, and Taylor saw the book and felt an instant kinship with the women who wore the hats.
When she worked on the play at Sundance, she recalls, she realized she needed to develop a central character. She settled on the character of a young woman named Yolanda, who goes through a family crisis and is sent to live with a relative and attend church with a bunch of hat-wearing women.
As she wrote, she also researched the history of hats in black churches and learned that the idea of looking your best for worship went clear back to Africa. Her play draws a line from Africa, to slavery, to freedom, to a woman finally getting a good-paying job and buying a hat and a pocketbook and shoes to match. Taylor says, "There are so many stories cupped under the brim of those hats."
Other events
"Utah's Local Crowns," photo exhibit by Victor Rivera, in the theater lobby. "Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats," photo exhibit, Utah Cultural Celebration Center, 1365 W. 3100 South, West Valley; Mondays through Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., through Feb. 29. Also, at a variety of locations, a discussion series on fashion, social customs and African-American tradition (see the Web site).
If you go . . .
What: "Crowns"
Where: The Grand Theatre, 1575 S. State
When: Friday through Feb. 9, 7:30 p.m.
How much: $10$24
Phone: 957-3322
Web: www.the-grand.org
E-mail: susan@desnews.com
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