Showcasing Africa’s Great Queens

A crown goaded Ingrid Thomas into exploring the past.

A tiara was placed on her head in 1969 when she was named the first Miss Black Beauty of Long Beach. Proud to be chosen, she pledged to give something back to her community. The pageant never became an annual event, and the crown stayed in her hands--a constant reminder, she said, that she wanted to do something positive with her title.

So she took the crown, a talent for clothing design and an interest in history and transformed them into a traveling pageant-play, bringing to life the ancient queens of Africa. That first play blossomed into other shows--some aimed at children or teen-agers--and then into the Queens Historical Society Inc., which annually organizes more than 50 shows around the country, all aimed at bringing to life the queens of antiquity.

One of the plays, “Queens of the Nile, NOW,” will be presented at Polytechnic Senior High School on Saturday to help begin African-American History Month in Long Beach.

“When I won that pageant, it really bugged me that I didn’t know my history. I wanted a better idea of where black people came from, what women had done in the past,” Thomas said. “So I started researching. I spent about 15 years finding out about ancient queens, what they looked like and how they lived.”

The lives and clothing of Queen Hatshepsut, ruler of Egypt, and Queen Tiye, mother of the boy-king Tutankhamen, were simple to recreate, because of the wealth of records left behind by the pharaohs.

But Thomas had little luck finding pictures or descriptions of what the biblical Queen Makeda, the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba, would have worn. So she began with the traditional gauzy cotton attire of current-day Ethiopia, added traditional embroidery and some imagination.

“I start with traditional attire, then I embellish it,” Thomas said. “After all, these costumes are for the stage.”

Thomas hopes that the plays will teach today’s youth greater respect for women, the kind of respect she believes women received in ancient Africa.

“Think of this: We’ve never had a woman President, but there were women as heads of state in 1500 B.C.” Thomas said.

To narrate the pageant, Thomas employs a griot , or traditional African oral historian and storyteller, played by actor Adisa Michael Anderson. For the models and actors, this weekend’s production will use local talent from Polytechnic High’s Black Onyx Performing Arts Workshop.

“Queens of the Nile, NOW,” is sponsored by the Long Beach Public Corporation of the Arts and Partners of Parks, a nonprofit organization set up to aid the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine.

The Saturday performance, in the auditorium of Polytechnic High at 1600 Atlantic Ave., is scheduled for 4 to 7 p.m. and is free. African art will be displayed and the Long Beach Community Choir will perform.

Information: (310) 421-9431, Ext. 4100.