‘We Used to Get High and Wear Bonnets All the Time’ set to showcase at Skidmore College
Play begins Friday and runs through Dec. 2
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. >> Perhaps the title, “We Used to Get High and Wear Bonnets All the Time,” best defines the play which is being offered during its world premiere at Skidmore College.
It plays weekends at the Saratoga Springs campus starting Friday and running through Dec. 2 (with a break over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend).
The title is playful, contradicting and whimsical. “Get high” suggests that the play has a contemporary tone. Yet, “bonnets” is a throw-back term conjuring an image of a different era. We don’t think of those who wore bonnets as getting high.
But they did, insists the playwright, Julia Jonas, who is also directing the work at Skidmore. She explains that one of her inspirations to write the play was the character Mary Tyrone, the mother who was addicted to drugs in Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”
“Our current opioid crisis seems like something new,” she says. “It’s not new. Addiction has always been with us.” The point of the play is to view our contemporary beliefs about addiction- especially with women- by examining them over a period of time. “I want to explore the issue of female addiction by tracing it through a historical lens.”
She does this by placing the play in four different time periods. The house in which the play is set is, at first, a 1890s factory. In 1940 it’s a photography studio and in in the 1990s a livingwork space. We see it in the present as a replica honoring its original use.
What Jonas is attempting to do with “We Used to Get High….” is look at the way memories impact our lives. She says the play is an attempt to examine memories – individual and collective – to understand how they can turn into myths.
She makes it clear that she didn’t write a memory play, as when one person reflects on their life or an incident in their life. Rather, she says, “It’s a memory play that is no one’s memory.”
In “We Used to Get High...” the character’s search for redemption is dependent on individuals building relationships with each other. “This is a play that explores survival,” she explains. “Why are some people stuck? Why do others triumph?” The answer she thinks is a sense of community. Too many people in trouble have no one, no sense of community, not even a sense of gathering.”
On an optimistic note, Jonas seems happy to point out that few people realize that O’Neill’s mother, on whom Mary was based, did recover from her addiction. “She lived the final decades of her life drug-free. The gift her family gave to her was to bear witness to her problems. The danger for most addicts is they feel alone.”
Jonas is a Brooklyn-based playwright and the founder of the experimental theater company Nellie Tinder, who believes a theater experience should both enlighten and entertain. As a playwright, Jonas insists her work is dedicated to telling honest stories.
However, she believes that humor is critical to any theater project. “There is sadness in this play, even tragedy. But there are a lot of funny moments as well.”
She also believes a production should be visually arresting as well. “I’m drawn to the physical experience of a staged production. Movement and dance are a way of bringing an audience into the period and the mood of the moment. In this play, it’s a way of making exciting something, that if played too seriously, could be close to melodrama.” She laughs as she adds, “We don’t want that.”
What Jonas does want is a communal theater experience in which audiences and actors pay witness to the issues surrounding addiction.
From November 16-18, November 29-December 2, you can bear witness to “We Used to Get High and Wear Bonnets All the Time” at Skidmore College.
For tickets and schedule information call 518- 580- 5000, or go to theatre.skidmore.edu