So in exchange for choosing Crowns: Black Women in Church Hats for our April book discussion. The members of Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series were given passes for the play Crowns: the Musical. According to NPR, "even before the book was finished, Marberry approached the artistic director of the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ about adapting if for the stage. From the more than 50 women in the book, playwright and director Regina Taylor created six composite characters. The things that I thought were lacking in the book: a story, a person who was not in church culture, a male, allusions to modern life, were all in the play. Even though Ms. Taylor stayed true to the real women in the book, using some of their lines verbatim, having a young person from a big city descend on the set which takes place in Darlington, SC, adds another dimension to these women's stories. Because of Yolanda, the teen from Chicago, the women themselves eventually open up and
The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series meets approximately once every six weeks at the Courtland S. Wilson Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library in New Haven, CT.