Theatre Lawrence’s new season to kick off with ‘Crowns,’ a celebration of Black women

photo by: Courtesy of Theatre Lawrence

Tiffani Smith, left, plays Yolanda, and Andrea Billings-Graham plays Mabel during a rehearsal for Theatre Lawrence’s production of “Crowns.”

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Theatre Lawrence is opening its new season Friday with a musical that explores the lives of Black women and, along the way, delves into an array of divides – Black/white, rural/urban, North/South, young/old, shame/pride.

“Crowns,” as director Annette Billings says, “is a very celebratory play, and I think it fits so well in our current times of lots of personal and professional and (national) stressors.”

Written by Regina Taylor in the early 2000s and based on a book by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry, the musical follows the experience of young Yolanda, who travels from the urban North to her grandmother’s home in the rural South after her brother is killed in the city. There she encounters something very different from the street life she’s accustomed to in New York: “a group of hat-wearing, church-loving, jubilant women,” as Billings describes the quintet of mentors who shepherd Yolanda through her darkest valley.

The five women all tell Yolanda what hats have meant to them individually and to African Americans throughout history. In the process, much is revealed about their struggles, both private and social, and also their triumphs.

photo by: Courtesy of Theatre Lawrence

Gay Glenn plays Wanda during a rehearsal for Theatre Lawrence’s production of “Crowns.”

They use “a lot of storytelling and music to convey to her her roots,” Billings says. “She’s trying to find herself, and each of these women in turn, they minister to her.”

As the title suggests, the role of headwear, whether African tribal adornment or modern millinery, plays a central role in the musical as a form of pride and self-expression.

During slavery, Billings says, the only place where slaves were allowed to congregate was in churches, and presenting oneself before God and the congregation in one’s finest — with a fancy hat being an outfit’s crowning glory — became a way for an abused and marginalized people to reclaim their stolen dignity, their “sense of royalty.”

“Church became a very powerful influence,” Billings says. It was “a safe place, a place they could draw strength from and add strength to.”

The intermingling of fashion and faith — and entertainment — became a hallmark of Black churches and spilled over into the broader community.

“The wearing of hats, the wearing of finery to decorate oneself is something that’s very familiar and common to us as a people,” Billings says. “Throughout the things that we’ve endured through time, we have maintained that sense of importance and royalty and right — the right to be, the right to be oneself and the right to express oneself in a way that feels familiar and empowering.”

The musical, which features a good deal of gospel music as well as nods to jazz and rap and other African American art forms, is also about relationships and how “supporting one another can be such a vital part of living,” Billings says.

photo by: Courtesy of Theatre Lawrence

Tiffani Smith as Yolanda in Theatre Lawrence’s production of “Crowns”

In the end, via her elders’ influence, the ballcap-wearing Yolanda, through a figurative — and often funny — process of wearing different hats, goes from feeling lost to regaining a “sense of what her rightful place is in the community,” Billings says, “and the world is good again for her.”

The dozens of hats that appear in “Crowns” have their own unique histories — some known, some lost forever — as most of them are real hats that belonged to real women.

The “vast majority” of hats in Theatre Lawrence’s inventory have been donated over the years, says Jane Pennington, the theater’s longtime costume designer.

“We made some of the specialty hats,” but most of the best period pieces “have come from Grandma’s closet,” she says, describing a typical process where people go through a relative’s closet, come across a fancy hat, recognize that it’s too special to throw out, and donate it to the theater instead.

“We’ve become the guardians of many families’ heirlooms,” says Pennington, who’s more than happy to give the ornate toppers a second life and a chance to be admired anew.

“Crowns” opens Friday at 4660 Bauer Farm Drive and will have multiple performances through Oct. 1. For information about tickets, call 785-843-SHOW (7469) or go online at theatrelawrence.com.

After the Oct. 1 performance, the theater will host a panel discussion with Billings; the Rev. Rachel Williams-Glenn, pastor of Lawrence’s St. Luke AME Church; and Amber Sellers, a Lawrence city commissioner.

Sellers was a vocal proponent of the recently passed municipal ordinance known as the CROWN Act, which stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair. The ordinance makes it illegal to discriminate based on natural hairstyles such as braids, afros, bantu knots, cornrows, curls, locs, twists or hair that is tightly coiled or tightly curled.

“This is culture to us,” Sellers said ahead of the City Commission’s unanimous vote last month. “This is us showing the world our history and celebrating where we come from, who we are. The CROWN Act has that value to it — it allows us to wear our crown in all of its wonderful glory.”

photo by: Courtesy of Theatre Lawrence

Janine Colter as Jeanette in Theatre Lawrence’s production of “Crowns”

photo by: Courtesy of Theatre Lawrence

Gay Glenn as Wanda in Theatre Lawrence’s production of “Crowns”

photo by: Courtesy of Theatre Lawrence

Kimberly Allen as Velma in Theatre Lawrence’s production of “Crowns”

photo by: Courtesy of Theatre Lawrence

Andrea Billings-Graham as Mabel in Theatre Lawrence’s production of “Crowns”

photo by: Courtesy of Theatre Lawrence

Lynda Anders as Mother Shaw in Theatre Lawrence’s production of “Crowns”

photo by: Courtesy of Theatre Lawrence

Joseph Washington-Brown as Man in Theatre Lawrence’s production of “Crowns”

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Opinion: Maren Morris’s powerful farewell to country music

Opinion by Nicole Hemmer

(CNN) — A small town, coated in ash, melting under the intense heat of a roaring fire. The sign greeting visitors — an American flag flapping next to the message “Welcome to our perfect small town, from sunrise to sundown” — disappearing beneath the smoke and embers.

That image closes the video for Maren Morris’s new EP “The Bridge,” the two-song release that marks her farewell to country music. “I do the best I can,” she sings on “Get the Hell Out of Here,” adding, “But the more I hang around, the less I give a damn.” Her indictment of country music, charted in two cleverly crafted country songs, is one of alienation and disaffection, of an industry too broken to be saved (“The rot at the root is the root of the problem,” she sings in the EP’s other song, “The Tree”).

The powerful farewell by Morris, a chart-topping, multi-award-winning country singer, comes at a moment when the politics of country music are front-page news. Jason Aldean’s “Try That In a Small Town,” an ode to vigilante violence, brought renewed attention to the genre’s deep cultural conservatism and racism, while Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” carried an antigovernment message so valuable to the right that Fox News used it as part of the opening question in the first Republican presidential primary debate in August — to the consternation of Anthony himself, who said, “It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me, like I’m one of them.”

But the obsession over Aldean and Anthony has overshadowed a broader battle happening in the country music industry, between those seeking to deepen the industry’s ties to right-wing politics and those seeking to carve out a place for a more inclusive, more representative — and more historically rooted — version of Americana, folk and country music. Morris, who is firmly in that second camp, has been part of the fight to redefine country, and even as she leaves, remains part of broadening the genre’s boundaries.

That fight, of course, is not new. Talking to the Los Angeles Times in what was essentially her exit interview from country music, Morris talked about the “fear-mongering about getting Dixie Chick-ed” — a reference to the collusion of the industry to end all airplay for the group now known as The Chicks after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized then-President George W. Bush over the Iraq War in 2003. But sharply political moments like that have tended to crowd out the more structural conservatism of the industry, as well as the progressive country voices challenging that conservatism.

Part of that structural conservatism has been a longstanding commitment within the industry, from gatekeepers like Billboard and radio conglomerates, to keeping the country charts White — see, for instance, the efforts to keep one of the most popular country songs of the past decade, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” off the Billboard Country charts.

Elsewhere, in 2021, Holly G, a Black country music fan who often felt isolated, even unsafe, at concerts where there were few other Black fans, founded the Black Opry. It quickly became a network for Black artists and fans, giving rise to the touring Black Opry Revue. The Black Opry, which both celebrates the Black roots of country, folk and Americana and creates a community for Black country, has given rise to a competing vision of country music that is deeply rooted in the genres’ shared histories.

As Lil Nas X shows, queer voices, too, have struggled to find a place in the country music industry. Although there is a long tradition of queer country artists, there has been little room for them in mainstream country, especially as it took a turn toward straight, White masculinity in the 1970s and 1980s.

Much of this industry, and some of its biggest stars, still support anti-LGBTQ politics. Jason Aldean amplified anti-trans comments made by his wife, remarks that prompted Morris to publicly call her out for transphobia. Country stars Travis Tritt and John Rich have boycotted Bud Light after the company sent a six pack of beers to a trans influencer. But that, too, has been contested in recent years. Morris joined other artists to host “Love Rising” in Nashville earlier this year, to protest proposed laws attacking drag queens and trans people. And country star Kelsea Ballerini performed with drag queens at this year’s CMT awards as part of that ongoing protest.

Not all of the industry’s conservatism comes from decades-long exclusion. In recent years, mainstream country has pushed out women artists. According to a study of country music radio play, women artists represented 33% of songs in 2000. That already paltry number shrank to just 11% by 2018. With women’s voices dying out on country radio, Morris joined Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby and Amanda Shires to form The Highwomen, an all-woman supergroup whose song “Crowded Table” won the 2021 Grammy for best country song of the year. For Morris, it wasn’t enough to treat “the rot at the root”; The Highwomen were a challenge to the industry, but could not, by themselves, transform it.

Talking about the “conservatism of country music” is, in some ways, part of the problem. It conflates country music with the country music industry, the interconnected corporate structures that determine who gets signed, what albums get airtime, what songs get charted. Do stations play Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” or do they opt for Allison Russell’s “Eve Was Black,” a lyrical challenge to White supremacy? Do they have that option, or do the industry leaders who offer the contracts and push the albums make that decision for them? (And for that matter, does Russell, a queer Black artist and trans rights activist, even want to share airspace with Aldean?)

For Morris, the music and the marketing have been difficult to separate. “The last few records,” she told the Los Angeles Times, “that’s always been in the back of my mind: Will this work in the country music universe?” And the more she saw of the industry that constructed that universe, the less she wanted to be part of it. But the progressive project within country music will continue — it’s far too broad and well-rooted to do otherwise. And who knows? One day, Morris may return. As she sings in “Get the Hell Out of Here” — “I don’t know what I’m doin’ / Don’t know what I’m tryin’ to find / My only resolution is I’m allowed to change my mind.”

Her only request: that the country music industry changes itself first.

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Jackie Copeland, former head of the Lewis Museum, dies

Jacqueline “Jackie” Copeland, the former executive director of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, and a longtime, passionate advocate for the visual arts, died Wednesday at Mercy Medical Center of complications from cancer. She was 76.

“Throughout her life, she not only curated art but also cultivated love, forged friendships and nurtured knowledge within us all. As an award-winning museum educator, cherished colleague, devoted mother, loving wife, and guardian of African-American art, her legacy shines brightly,” Copeland’s family said in a statement to The Baltimore Sun.

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Copeland, who most recently was chair of the Maryland State Arts Council, spent three decades working for major museums nationwide and studying every aspect of how successful arts institutions operate. She took over leadership of the Lewis Museum in 2019.

At the time Copeland described her appointment as “the capstone of my career because it brings together my passion for the community and my passion for art and history.”

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A talented and innovative curator, Copeland spent three decades working for some of the largest museums in the U.S., including a 15-year stint at the Walters Art Museum, where she was co-director of education and 10 years at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Copeland was instrumental in getting the once-ailing Lewis Museum back on track over her tenure. But after 18 months as executive director, Copeland said she resigned after “the board told me it wanted to go in a different direction with the museum’s leadership.”

In 2021 she became chairwoman of the Maryland State Arts Council, which during the pandemic awarded more than $12 million in emergency funds to more than 1,600 artists and cultural groups.

The acclaimed photographer Dawoud Bey, wrote in a social media post that Copeland was a “tireless and brilliant culture and institutional worker” with whom he had collaborated twice — once at the Walker, and once at the Walters.

“Jackie was a real advocate for making the museum space a more inclusive one for young people and others often excluded from the institutional equation,” Bey wrote.

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