The Bonnies: I’m on Fire, You’re on Fire, We’re on Fire

Seattle performance duo The Bonnies (Kaitlin McCarthy and Jenny Peterson) merge their decade of comedy dance experience with their “more serious” art practice to debut an evening length joyride of grotesque femininity, experimental indulgence, and the intimacy of a friendship 15 years in the making. 

Inspired by the beloved absurdist 1966 Czech New Wave film, Daisies, The Bonnies harness their perceived femininity–the silly, slutty, trivial, and excessive–to craft a world where fantasies can play out on a larger-than-life scale: a candy-colored universe of impulse and freewheeling femme chaos. In a collision of eras, The Bonnies pull from 60s cinema, Bruce Springsteen’s catalogue, the cultural phenomenon surrounding Lorena Bobbitt, and Jenny and Kaitlin’s fantasy bedroom dances–both adolescent and contemporary. Working their way towards euphoria–and the inevitable crash down–The Bonnies (and their rainbow monster puppet alter egos) teeter between vision and delusion, manifesting a shared destiny built from queer platonic love. 

The sound score by Jenny includes subversive covers of nostalgic classics (both 90s club anthems and road trip sing-alongs) side-by-side with sweeping original compositions in synth, piano, and voice. Riding the edge of parody into sincerity, a collection of cultural references collide into something entirely new. 

Visual design by Kaitlin manifests inside a fully operational set (by Teia O’Malley), a color-pop homage to both Věra Chytilová‘s saccharine-hued Daisies and an ecstatic obsession with texture. Two ornately handcrafted wearable art pieces distill the visual ethos into two characters of pure fantasy played by dancers Hendri Wa and Jackson Knappen. 

An interdisciplinary escapade through wild imagination, I’m on Fire, You’re on Fire, We’re on Fire grapples with the morally complex territory of fantasy, violence, and vulnerability of desire, cloaked as a ditzy comedy routine.