BONNETS: HOW LADIES OF GOOD BREEDING ARE INDUCED TO MURDER (spotlight series)
By Jen Silverman
Directed by René Copeland
Wednesday - Saturday, April 22-25, at 7:30pm, Sunday, April 26th at 2:00
Blackbox Theatre, Kleist Center For Art & Drama

This play contains mature themes. Parental discretion is advised.

Proper women are supposed to be quiet, polite, and good. In Bonnets, by Jen Silverman, they are anything but. A riotous chorus of bonnet-clad women gleefully ushers us through a world of repression, desire, and quiet desperation, where love affairs spark and ignite, rules tighten then choke, and something dangerous begins to simmer beneath the surface. Across a shattering of time and space, women pushed to the edges of their own lives start to ask a simple question: what if they didn’t behave? What if they rebel?

Darkly funny, theatrical, and unapologetically punk, Bonnets explodes into a blood-soaked exploration of power, identity, and rebellion seen through eyes of three women in differing times and places: Claire an aristocratic woman in 17th century France, Webster a maid in Victoria England, and Prudence, a puritan girl in a Salem-esque community. As longing turns to action and civility twists and falls away, these ladies rewrite the rules in the most shocking ways possible.