“To wear a hat well, you have to have ‘Hattitude.’”

Crowns, Ebony Theatre Company, 4718 W. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, 90016. Opens May 8; performances Thurs.-Fri., 8 pm; Sat. 2 & 8; Sun. 3; through June 14. Tickets: $40-55, $20 students. Call 323.964.9766 or visit www.ebonyrep.org.

The Pasadena Playhouse engagement opens July 12 at 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena, 91101. Previews July 10-11. Through August 23. Single tickets go on sale May 25. Subscription tickets available now at 626-356-PLAY or by visiting www.pasadenaplayhouse.org.

When Aretha Franklin sang “My Country Tis of Thee” at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration, it wasn’t the Queen of Soul’s trademark voice that captured the rapt world’s attention. It was her choice of millinery. The now iconic grey felt hat with its front-and-center rhinestone-studded bow went from being a Capitol steps debutante to an international fashion diva in less time than it takes to post a Twitter tweet. Today it has its own Facebook page, an upcoming exhibit at the Smithsonian and a reserved final resting place in the Obama presidential library.

That the daughter of renowned minister C.L. Franklin should choose a chapeau of such imposing character comes as no surprise, says Wren T. Brown, founder of the Ebony Repertory Theatre (ERT) who, in a historic partnership with the Pasadena Playhouse, is co-producing the Los Angeles premiere of Regina Taylor’s Crowns, a musical that celebrates the African American church tradition of wearing hats, which opens May 8 at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center before transferring to the Playhouse on July 10.

Directed by ERT Artistic Director Israel Hicks, with musical direction by Eric Reed, the LA production stars Paula Kelly, Suzzanne Douglas, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Ann Weldon, Sharon Catherine Blanks, Angela Wildflower Polk and Clinton Derricks-Carroll.

“Aretha comes out of the highest standard of the black church tradition,” Brown explains. “To see the elders of the church adorn themselves with crowns was a part of the custom she was born into. Mahalia Jackson. Albertina Walker. She witnessed the other great ladies of gospel music ornament themselves that way.” Michael Cunningham and journalist Craig Marberry lovingly captured that tradition in their bestselling 2000 coffee table book Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats, which features black and white photos and interviews with 50 North Carolina self-professed “hat queens.”

Just prior to publication, Marberry approached Emily Mann, artistic director of Princeton University’s McCarter Theatre with the idea of turning the manuscript into a play. Mann, who had adapted the Delany Sisters’ book Having Our Say for the stage, quickly saw the potential of Crowns and approached prolific actor, playwright and director Regina Taylor who immediately identified with the material.

“From the moment Emily sent me the book, there was recognition,” says Taylor. “I opened it up and saw these women and their hats. Looking at their faces, reading their stories, there was recognition of my family; the women who helped raise me and this community.” Best known for her Golden Globe winning television role on I’ll Fly Away and now starring in The Unit, Taylor is a member and artistic associate of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre where she produced Drowning Crown, her acclaimed adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull, and wrote the March 2009 world premiere of Magnolia, directed by August: Osage County Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro.

“It’s very much a piece I wrote for my mother,” Taylor emphasizes. “I’d never thought much about the tradition. I wasn’t a big hat wearer except for the occasional baseball cap. At some point she took me through her closet and showed me her hats. She taught me the stories of each one. When she wore it. Why she wore it. My mother’s hats were very revealing in terms of helping me to know different parts of her. It’s something I’ve come to appreciate very much.”

Growing up in a deeply matriarchal family and raised by three generations of women himself, Brown felt a similar connection to the book as Taylor. When he subsequently learned the methodology she utilized for her adaption, he was thrilled. “She’s a brilliant hyphenate and not a dilettante at all in that hyphenation. By connecting the pageantry in Crowns to African headdress customs, Regina honors those dual traditions in a way I find frankly sublime. It is part of the tremendous service she has afforded this country through the play.”

For Taylor, turning a collection of oral histories into a workable play presented its own challenges. “Of course you have the church music and the wearing of the hats. Each hat has so many stories cupped under the brim. From weddings to funerals to baptisms. These life affirming celebratory markers of life that reveal so much about the woman who wears the hat. The piece celebrates the tenacity of the individual spirit as it is expressed through what one chooses to put on one’s head. It’s about what’s passed down.”

During a two year development process that included a workshop at Sundance, Taylor added a plot to anchor the book’s diverse stories that concerned a Brooklyn teenager sent down to her South Carolina grandmother after her brother is shot. The piece she would ultimately craft “transcends category” according to Brown, Pasadena Playhouse Artistic Director Sheldon Epps and director Hicks.

“Though it has a down home feel because of the nature of the material, it’s really kind of a piece of performance art,” Epps notes. “It takes these disparate theatrical elements–music, text, spirituals, gospels, dance-and weaves them all together into a theatre piece that doesn’t have a category in a good way. You can’t say it’s a play. You can’t say it’s a musical. You can’t say it’s a dance piece. You can’t say it’s poetry. It’s some of all of that.  That’s what gives it its own distinct theatrical excitement.”

“I think Regina has hit upon something that is well knit together and the fabric as such makes a nice tapestry,” admits director Hicks who is approaching the material as a play with music. “You’ve got to put the pieces together. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle in some ways because things that happen in one space are connected later on in the piece. As you go, it’s finding those threads. As we do in life, you know? We find those threads and those connections. It doesn’t always happen in a linear fashion but it all goes to make up the human being.”

Audiences ultimately agreed. Since its 2002 world premiere at the McCarter to the subsequent transfer to co-producing partner Second Stage in New York and the national tour, all directed by Taylor, Crowns has become one of the most produced musicals in the country. People attend with their children and grandchildren, oftentimes more than once. Arena Stage in Washington, DC recently concluded a production it now stages annually.

“It’s the one piece I think is absolutely available for everybody in every age range,” says Hicks. “It’s very difficult to find that any longer. The new theatrical pieces are usually so targeted and so specific but this one is universal in its message.”

A Historic Collaboration & Reunion

The Crowns collaboration represents a historic moment in local LA theatre as well as a reunion of sorts for old friends.

Director Hicks, who recently accomplished his own historic theatrical feat at Denver Center Theatre by being the first to direct August Wilson’s entire 10 play cycle for one theatre company, was Epps’ former professor at Carnegie Mellon. Epps met Brown at the Guthrie then later directed him in 1997’s On Borrowed Time, the first he would helm as the newly installed artistic director of the Playhouse. Crowns author Mayberry wrote a third coffee table book called Cuttin’ Up: Wit and Wisdom from Black Barber Shops that Charles Randolph Wright (Blue) turned into a play directed by Hicks at the Playhouse in 2007. All possess professional or personal relationships with Taylor in one form or another.

When asked if they were now actively mining coffee table books for future plays, the three laugh. While both Epps and Brown have had informal conversations with Taylor over the years regarding the play, it was Brown who first pursued the LA rights. Once she agreed, he announced Crowns would be ERT’s second theatrical offering during last fall’s critically acclaimed inaugural production of August Wilson’s Two Trains Running.

“In December, Sheldon phoned me and said the Playhouse is celebrating women this season,” explains Brown, after declaring that he “unabashedly adores” Epps. “We have a slot that is open. I wonder if you would consider having the Playhouse join Ebony Repertory as a co-producer for the presentation of Crowns.’ It really made sense on a number of levels. Israel and Sheldon’s long professional and personal relationship. How it would benefit the community of actors. We couldn’t think of anything finer than to provide 20 weeks of employment. Our mission is to produce high quality theatre that allows the artists who populate this city the opportunity to work the way they traditionally do in regional theatre right here at home.”

“I certainly didn’t begrudge the fact that Wren and Israel were smart enough to put it into their season,” laughs Epps. “I was really happy for them and happy that Crowns was going to have a LA premiere when I first heard about it. After I saw their superb production of Two Trains Running, I thought it clearly illustrated the type of artistry they intend to display. I wanted to support this new but what I feel is an extremely valuable company with whom I share certain aesthetics. There just seemed to be a natural alignment between the creative forces involved and the aesthetics of the two theatres.”

For director Hicks, the collaboration raised more practical challenges. “Co-production is always tricky,” he points out. “You hope what you do here works in the next space but there are always adjustments to be made. So you have to go back in and re-configure certain pieces so it works for the space. What I’ve tried to do more than anything else is tell this story. It’s very easy sometimes to get lost in the music and miss the story.”

While Pasadena has collaborated with other LA theatres like Deaf West and Cornerstone, and currently hosts the Furious Theatre Company, it has never co-produced a production that planned to start at another theatre before transferring to their stage.

“This is kind of a new idea and frankly I’m not aware of it on an immediate transfer basis like this,” states Epps. “I don’t think it’s happened before. I know there have been 99-seat theatre productions like Permanent Collection that moved to the Kirk Douglas but that was sort of after the fact of the first run at the other theatre. Louis & Keely now at the Geffen. It’s one of the new ways of thinking that all arts organizations need to be conscious of as we move through tough economic times.”

“There will be some overlap of audiences but the audiences are very different,” adds Brown.  “To have a venerable institution of almost 100 years old coming together with a two year institution, we thought would be a wonderful statement to the theatre community particularly during these recessionary times.”

Epps couldn’t be happier to have the Playhouse brand benefit the burgeoning ERT. “If there’s benefit and focus that goes to Ebony Theatre Company as a result of this collaboration, then great! Wonderful! I’m more than happy to do that for them and for us. I’m thrilled to be starting a relationship I hope will continue long into the future.

To Hicks, the collaboration is the latest example of how theatre continues to creatively triumph over the doomsayers who annually forecast its demise. “What I’ve said in the past is that there are only two temples left in the world–the church and the theatre–where we can speak on one subject to a mass group of people and have it hopefully understood. There is always a problem with one or the other. Either the church is dying or theatre is dying. We’ve heard that for years from god knows how many sectors. But church is still around and theatre is still around. When given the opportunity to tell our story or to make a point about human existence, then I think we ought to do it as truthfully as possible and as poignantly as possible. And hope that you don’t screw it up!” he laughs.

Perhaps the most critical question facing the producers right now is–how do they plan to handle the play’s inevitable “crown wearing” audience? “Certainly we have heard tell that across the nation there have been women and men who come to the theatre very prepared to enter the world of Crowns with their own,” says Brown. “We plan to handle it delicately but we are also bracing ourselves for some notions of obstruction.”

“We actually have that happen quite frequently here at the Playhouse, particularly for some of the musical stuff we do,” says Epps. “The Red Hat Society and other individuals come quite often. Those bonnets, which can be pretty big or tall or wide, have been a problem for the people sitting behind. It makes for kind of interactive theatre, I think!” he laughs.

Hicks agrees. “Like the play says, ‘You have to be careful when you sit behind a hat queen.’”