The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘Queens of the Golden Mask’
Taking a chance on a tale of Klan wives
Klan wives: It’s an intriguing topic. So much so that Jacqui Hubbard, the intrepid artistic director at Ivoryton Playhouse, chose to produce the new play “The Queens of the Golden Mask.”
It’s not a topic in the old summer theater’s comfort zone; Ivoryton’s last three offerings were musicals “Grease,” “A Chorus Line” and “Once.”
Writer/actor Carole Lockwood submitted the play to a women’s playwright festival, but it had two acts so it didn’t fit that festival, Hubbard said in a phone chat the other day.
“But I read it and I was intrigued by it, and I kept it on my desk for a year,” she said. “... And it was still on my desk when Charlottesville happened.”
So Hubbard picked it up again, brought it to her board because she felt strongly it should be done, and it opened this week and will run through Nov. 18.
“Look, I don’t often do plays and I certainly don’t often do drama because it’s very hard to sell,” Hubbard said.
Set in summer 1961 in Celestial, Alabama, the play begins in the kitchen of the Sage household where the matriarch, Ida, has gathered friends to meet the new girl in town — Rose from Ohio. Will she fit in with the ladies of Celestial who bake pies, sell Avon products and belong to the Ku Klux Klan?
Based on the experiences in the autobiographical book “Long Time Coming: An Insiders Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing that Rocked the World,” which is about a woman inside a racist and violent world, “Queens of the Golden Mask” is full of “girl talk,” everyday life and ... danger.
In Klan families, women were subservient and men beat their wives in order to sustain white male supremacy, said Hubbard. Women were partners in the goal of maintaining white supremacy but there were some who put their lives on the line to challenge that way of life.
“It’s really about peer pressure and normalizing hate,” said Hubbard. “What happens when ... people in the community are not bad people, but their belief system is messed up? It couldn’t be more relevant; it just couldn’t.”
Hubbard said based on early rehearsals, “It’s been a real adventure to dig into this because it’s hard for the actors, too. They have to take on characters that they have to know and love. I call it a cross between ‘Steel Magnolias’ and ‘Mississippi Burning.’”
These are women you’d meet in the grocery store — warm, friendly and funny. “They just happen to have a belief system that is alien to what a lot of the rest of us believe in,” Hubbard said.She said it’s not a political play during this fractious time.
“It’s not ... we’re not talking about politics. We’re talking about people and people’s prejudices,” she said, adding the topic will spur conversation.
Hubbard said the playwright has been tweaking the play, which was written in 2008, but “there’s no sort-of sly nods to what’s going on now. It’s very much of its time, but even then it can’t help reflect what’s going on (now).”