LANGUAGE OF DOLLS
is presented In Collaboration with New Georges!
How do we talk about race, history, aging, friendship, loss– and trees?
Three old friends come to a cabin in the woods.
They find a box of dolls.
What do the dolls say?
written & performed by Lizzie Olesker, Peggy Pettitt, and Louise Smith
produced by Mikelle Kelly
Language of Dolls is an original collaborative theater piece by veteran downtown performers Lizzie Olesker, Peggy Pettitt and Louise Smith. After forty-plus years of knowing each other, we embarked on a series of intentionally candid and at times, difficult conversations about our identities as one Black woman and two white women. Now in our seventies, we wanted to unravel the subtle and overt ways that systemic racism has entered our lives and most intimate relationships. We recorded and transcribed these conversations which revealed more than we knew or expected of each other.
A visit to the exhibit Black Dolls at The New York Historical Society profoundly affected the direction and focus of our collaborative exploration. The Black dolls we witnessed, made in the 19th and early 20th century, spoke to us in their haunting, silent presence. The dolls’ hidden histories inspired us to create our own “soul dolls” from found materials, discovering how each one possessed a language of poetic possibility–a Language of Dolls.
Following each performance, audience members may participate in a guided conversation about the issues and questions that the piece raises for them. What messages around race have we received from the time we were born and carried throughout our lives? How do harmful, racialized images and daily experiences become internalized projections? How does our interconnectivity as friends, artists, healers, and storytellers help us resist rigid categorizations? How do we stay at the table through our differences to have difficult but necessary conversations?
Language of Dolls is presented In Collaboration with New Georges, an artist service program and active partnership with artists in which New Georges helps steward artist-driven independent productions of new works we love, with support from Venturous Theater Fund.
MEET THE ARTISTS
Lizzie Olesker (writer/performer) makes plays and performances that explore hidden histories and the poetry of everyday experience. Her work spanning decades has been developed and seen at New Georges, Dixon Place, Ohio Theater, Clubbed Thumb, Cherry Lane, Invisible Dog, and the Public Theater. She’s been an actor with the veteran downtown theater company the Talking Band, most recently at La Mama and Mabou Mines Theater. She collaborated with experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs on the hybrid film The Washing Society and the performance Every Fold Matters presented in neighborhood laundromats. Her current collaborative play Language of Dolls, with Peggy Pettitt and Louise Smith, has been presented at the Foundry Theater in Ohio and Touchstone Theater in Bethlehem, PA.
Peggy Pettitt (writer/performer) has written over ten original plays in which she portrays a spectrum of characters that shed light on the multifaceted struggles of African American men and women who live with issues of domestic violence, sexual abuse, cross-generational differences, voter registration, and global health concerns that impact communities. She has collaborated on creative projects with Touchstone Theatre, New York Street Theatre Caravan, Modern Times Theatre, The AJODA African Elders and The Big Dance Theatre. She has performed in France, England, West Africa, and French Guiana. Grants and awards include the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Fulbright Fellowship. As the Founding Director of Pearls of Wisdom, an elder storytelling ensemble, she was inducted into City Lore’s Peoples Hall of Fame and currently teaches self-scripting at New York University. In 1972, Pettitt starred in the feature film Black Girl directed by Ossie Davis and was nominated for Best Actress by the NAACP.
Louise Smith (writer/performer) loves to collaborate on making theatrical works and is a firm believer in the necessity of live theater to bring us together to tell important and enlivening stories. A solo artist and writer, she has created and performed original solo works, as well as performed with several NY experimental theater stalwarts including Ping Chong, Talking Band, Otrabanda, Meredith Monk, and Ann Bogart. She collaborated with Peggy Pettitt on a duet called PALAVER in 1988, and Lizzie Olesker has directed /dramaturged a number of her solo shows. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Mikelle Kelly (producer) is a Brooklyn-based producer, lighting designer, and production electrician from the Pacific Northwest. Recent producer credits: Foosball, Language of Dolls workshop, New Georges 2025 Benefit, and Things in My Childhood Bedroom That Screamed: “I’m Queer”. Recent design credits: Letters from Tyra at The Brick, Real Estate at The Brick, and BALLETCORE Recital: Quest to Dream at LPAC. Recent associate design credits: Extra Dry at NY Fringe Festival & Edinburgh Fringe, Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods at HERE Arts, and The Barbarians at La Mama. Selected electrician credits: Pre-Existing Condition at Greenwich House, Kenrex at Lucille Lortel, The Antiquities at Playwrights Horizons, and Dave Malloy’s new musical Three Houses at Signature Theater in New York.