RALEIGH - The cast members of Burning Coal Theatre's "Crowns" won't actually wear church hats on stage, which may surprise readers familiar with the book on which Regina Taylor's gospel musical is based: "Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats."

But several of them are avid hat wearers, in church or elsewhere. And they had plenty to say when we asked them about crowning glories of their past and present.

Walking the walk

"I knew I had to walk differently. My mother would even say, 'You're wearing a hat so you have to walk this way. I'm going to teach you how to walk.' And you're like, 'OK,' teetering. And 'Hold your purse this way when you go into church.' They thought that was so cute: 'Oh, look at her holding her purse this way, even though there's nothing in it but gum and some tissue paper.'" — LeDawna Akins

Sunday hats, Monday hats

"When I became a young woman and I was living in New York, I used to wear hats just about every day. It was a part of my outfit. They could be leather. Felt hats were my favorite for everyday hats.

"The Sunday hat was really something special for kind of like the regal women of the church: the preacher's wife, the women on the prayer bench, the deacons' wives. These were the serious hats.

"And you can go to church today, like Communion Sunday, and on the first rows you have all these people dressed in white, like the mothers of the church, and of 99 percent you'd be pressed to find one who does not have a hat on. ... And these are people unlike myself -- who likes to wear hats not only on Sunday but mainly every day -- these people normally wear hats only on Sunday. Only on Sunday. So there's a difference." — Joan J

Southern propriety

"I'm originally from New York City, so every time I visited family in the South, my mother would have the mentality, 'OK, we need to get some hats, we're going down South for church.' ... All of the sudden the outfits were kicked up a notch. Or if we went down for Christmas, we all broke out our hats.

"And they knew the minute we came into church, 'Oh, that's the Mae Frances family from New York.' ... We weren't trying to outdress anybody, but it ended up being that way. ... We shopped on-sale stuff just like everybody else. But they were like, 'Where'd you get that from? You didn't get that from here.'" — LeDawna Akins

Rabun's ribbons

"When we were little, the only time we wore hats was around Easter. Otherwise, you were in ribbons and bows. So I had two drawers of ribbons. I had all kinds of ribbons; my mother was a seamstress. I had red polka dots. I had white ribbons. Then there were lace with those eyelets in them. All colors: yellow, orange, blue, purple, and lots of white, because white could go with anything." — Yolanda Rabun

Sad hats, happy hats

"You could be wearing a hat in joyful times, even a fancy wedding, or in sorrowful times. ... Going to a funeral, the main family, you knew you had to wear a hat. No matter how you had to hunt to find one, you had to wear a hat. My father died when I was 19, and the first thing everybody said was, 'What are you wearing?' And so I had to go all over Manhattan trying to find a hat." — LeDawna Akins

Grace and style

"My mother wasn't a hat wearer and neither was my grandmother. Our crowns were our hair in my family. And my mother was big on etiquette and charm and being ladylike at all times and being very correct and being very well put together. ... This was a woman who would make me walk with a book on my head and at 12 taught me how to walk in heels with an erect back and stomach tucked, and that a girdle is a piece of every young girl's wardrobe.

"And I see so much of that going away today. Young ladies just have no idea what proper undergarments are and how it can make the difference in their outfits. This is what this play reminds me of, those things that aren't discussed anymore with young ladies. These traditions that aren't passed down because either we've just gotten away from it or maybe our generation thinks that it's too old-fashioned to put these restrictions on younger folks because we didn't like doing it. But there's something to be said for some traditions." — Emelia Cowans

What's the big deal?

"I have a line later on that talks about the hat representing a lot of sacrifices. Some people might think, 'It's a hat. What's the big deal about a hat?' You know what she had to do to earn it? How many times she had to work as a maid to get that hat for that one particular Sunday because she wanted to present herself before the king?" — LeDawna Akins

At the Derby

"My fondest memories of the most extreme hats in my life weren't in the church, ironically. They were when I was a news producer in Louisville, Kentucky, and it was time to cover the Derby. Derby time, your hat is everything. The Kentucky Derby is more about hats than it is about horses. And if you're caught at the Kentucky Derby without a hat on, you're not in order. So you see some very expensive, very extravagant, beautiful hats come out ... the type of hats that you would definitely see worn in the black church on any given Sunday." — Emelia Cowans