Experimental drama about race and friendship premieres in Yellow Springs

A new play, “The Language of Dolls,” premieres this week at the Foundry Theater at Antioch College in Yellow Springs.

In the play, the characters (Lizzie, Louise and Peggy) spend the night in a cabin in the forest. Away from the stage you can hear the sounds of rain and birds.

The actors are longtime friends who attended Antioch College together in the 1970s and went on to pursue careers in the theater. Louise Smith and Lizzie Olesker are white and Peggy Pettitt is black. In the drama, they play versions of themselves. On this one day, the women struggle with the racial history in their lives and in America.

Two years ago, the women knew they wanted to work on a drama, Smith said.

“In Peggy’s work, she was really interested in how our identities are shaped by those early play experiences, those early messages that we receive in our education, particularly around black children, and the kinds of messages that they receive.”

Then Olesker and Pettit visited an exhibit of black dolls from the 1850s to 1940s. These dolls were all hand-sewn by black women. They had a spiritual presence, Pettit said.

“But I felt in many ways that they weren’t just dolls, that people had lost family members through this slave experience, and that maybe sometimes they had to recreate for themselves, a mother, an aunt, an uncle.

And like the buttons for the eyes, the fabric itself, did you wonder if that belonged to someone’s brother? Did this particular material belong to someone’s sister?”

Without saying a word, the dolls spoke for those left behind, Lizzie Olesker said. “This idea that if the puppets could talk, what would they say? Giving a language to something that doesn’t have it.”

In the play, the women find a box of black and white dolls in the hut. It’s experimental theater. Sometimes the women are themselves and tell their stories.

Based on their conversations, the women wrote monologues and dialogues. They refined these scenes through improvisations, which they recorded on tape, transcribed and revised with further improvisations.

When Smith bought a black baby doll at a sale, she had an idea for a scene between her and Peggy.

“I can buy a baby doll that’s black,” Louise says during the piece, “and that’s my baby doll now, and I can play with that baby doll however I want.”

“When I suggested it, my colleagues were honestly a little horrified, and it was one of those moments where they said, ‘I don’t know…'” Smith said.

When improvising, Peggy followed her gut feeling. “She became much more than just Louise,” Pettitt said. “It became a symbol of the attitude that I can play with any doll I want. And, you know, just reacting to them the way I felt in the moment.” it down.

Peggy: Okay, are you saying we can’t protect our babies? Are you saying I can’t protect a baby? What do you say?
Louise: I’m not saying anything about you.
Peggy: Yes, I understand you.
Louise: This is about me.
Peggy: Put it down. Put it down! We’re all supposed to be able to pay with dolls, but don’t do that, don’t go anywhere…
Louise: I can play with any baby doll I want!

At the end of this scene, Louise decides to go out, but Peggy can’t go. She stays at the table.

“Nobody wants to stay at the table,” Pettitt said. “But we have to! In a way, the table is like a tree trunk for me. It’s as if the roots of this entire evening lie at this table. This table is a tree trunk from which everything grows.

“And we recognize how fragile things are and that nothing can be assumed, that everything requires an active maintenance, and I think this piece is part of an active maintenance of a hope.”

Language of the Dolls is playing this weekend the Foundry Theater at Antioch College.

This story was produced on Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.