Puppetopia 2025: The Harlem Doll Palace
PUPPETOPIA: THE HARLEM DOLL PALACE May 21-June 1, 2025
Welcome to Aunt Len’s Doll and Toy Museum! Behind the pink door of a three story Harlem brownstone lies a world created by Lennon Holder Hoyte – affectionately known as Aunt Len. The dolls from her “dollection” seek to keep Aunt Len, their beloved museum founder, alive before the outside world can invoke its realities of life, ashes and dust. As Harlem deteriorates around her beloved doll museum, the dolls recreate their journeys to the museum in an effort to keep Aunt Len’s memory alive. Enter the world of The Harlem Doll Palace. Remember, an appointment is necessary for admission.
HERE’s Puppetopia, a two-week puppetry state of mind, returns for its fourth annual edition. Curated by HERE Co-Founder Barbara Busackino and Dream Music Artistic Director and star Alum Basil Twist, the festival presents original work.
May 29th Talkback Discussion
The Harlem Doll Palace highlights the work of Lenon Holder Hoyte, founder of Aunt Len’s Doll and Toy Museum. In this panel discussion Alva Rogers, playwright and lead performer in the show, Annalisa Dias, HERE co-director, Ashley Winkfield, director, and Dr. Paulette Richards, author of Object Performance in the Black Atlantic: The United States, will reflect on why doll play was serious business for Aunt Len. Panelists will provide an overview of Holder Hoyte’s association with the La Fargue clinic, which offered mental health services to Harlem residents from 1946 – 1959. Then they will discuss the evolution of the show which has included live actors playing dolls, dolls manipulated as puppets, and puppets constructed to represent dolls, considering the dramaturgical objectives and consequences of these choices. This examination of the line between dolls and puppets further echoes Robin Bernstein’s assertion that dolls trouble the boundary between person and thing. Bernstein associates Black dolls with “the terror at the ontological core of slavery” since the slaveholding system tried to define one class of humans as things. Thus, the panelists will conclude with reflections on how The Harlem Doll Palace uses dolls to work the powerful sympathetic magic of figuring Black people as empowered human beings.
The Harlem Doll Palace
Performances:
- Wednesday, May 21st: 7 pm
- Thursday, May 22nd: 7 pm
- Friday, May 23rd: 7 pm
- Saturday, May 24th: 2 pm and 7 pm
- Sunday, May 25th: 2 pm
- Tuesday, May 27th: 7 pm
- Wednesday, May 28th: 7 pm
- Thursday, May 29th: 7 pm (Post Show Discussion)*
- Friday, May 30th: 7 pm
- Saturday, May 31st: 2 pm and 7 pm
- Sunday, June 1st: 2 pm
Location: HERE Mainstage, 145 6th Avenue, New York, NY
Tickets starting at $37
We understand the extreme challenges that our current financial climate presents. No matter your socioeconomic status, we want everyone to have access to groundbreaking art. There are ten tickets priced at $10 available for each performance on a first-come, first-served basis, for those in need of financial assistance. These tickets are available with the code ACCESS. Limit two tickets per patron. Subject to availability.
* May 29 Post Show Discussion
The Harlem Doll Palace highlights the work of Lenon Holder Hoyte, founder of Aunt Len’s Doll and Toy Museum. In this panel discussion Alva Rogers, playwright and lead performer in the show, Annalisa Dias, co-director, Ashley Winkfield, director, and Dr. Paulette Richardsa, author of Object Performance in the Black Atlantic: The United States, will reflect on why doll play was serious business for Aunt Len. Panelists will provide an overview of Holder Hoyte’s association with the La Fargue clinic, which offered mental health services to Harlem residents from 1946 – 1959. Then they will discuss the evolution of the show which has included live actors playing dolls, dolls manipulated as puppets, and puppets constructed to represent dolls, considering the dramaturgical objectives and consequences of these choices. This examination of the line between dolls and puppets further echoes Robin Bernstein’s assertion that dolls trouble the boundary between person and thing. Bernstein associates Black dolls with “the terror at the ontological core of slavery” since the slaveholding system tried to define one class of humans as things. Thus, the panelists will conclude with reflections on how The Harlem Doll Palace uses dolls to work the powerful sympathetic magic of figuring Black people as empowered human beings.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Directed by Ash Winkfield
Performed by Mecca Akbar, Thalya David, Charlotte Lily Gaspard, Marcella Murray, Alva Rogers, Ash Winkfield
Music, Lyrics, and Scoring by Bruce Monroe
Sound Design Dave Pascal
Lighting Design Milner Sommers
Costume Design Mark Ruffin & Ash Winkfield
Production Design Ash Winkfield
Carpentry Chris Flanagan
Stage Manager Emily Grierson
Production Assistant, Sewist, Props William PK Carter
Workshop Director & Set Designer Jessica Simon
Puppet Design
Amanda Card – Shadow Puppets
William PK Carter – Butterfly Puppets
Rosa Elling – Army Talking Doll
Charlotte Lily Gaspard – Costumes for Army Talking Doll & Aunt Len Doll
Dorothy James – Brown Nurse Doll, Grace Kelly Doll, Ninon French Fashion Doll (In collaboration with Rowan Magee), Hidden Shadows
Sono Kuwayama – Hannah, Early, Sarah, Topsy Turvies
Leah Levine – The Missus
Rowan Magee – Brown Nurse Doll, Grace Kelly Doll, Ninon French Fashion Doll (In collaboration with Dorothy James)
Brenna Ross – Crochet Gobo
Esme Roszel – Izannah Walker Doll, Aunt Len Doll
Alva Rogers, the Artistic Director of ALVA PUPPET THEATER, is a dramatist, puppeteer, and multidisciplinary artist. The company’s most recent work, Topsy-Turvy, was presented at The 2024 Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Gala at the request of Creative Trailblazer honoree, Solange Knowles and The Museum of Modern Art in 2023. Her work with Rodeo Caledonia High Fidelity Performance Theater ignited an early career as a performance artist and film actor (School Daze, Daughters of the Dust). Later, she concentrated more on writing, earning MFAs in Musical Theatre Writing (NYU/Tisch) and Playwriting (Brown); she also holds an MAT in History (Bard).
Ashley Winkfield (xe/xem/xyr) is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily in theater and the puppetry arts. Winkfield specializes in new and devised work presented in New York City, and has toured domestically and internationally with Basil Twist (Rite of Spring, Sister’s Follies, Book of Mountains and Seas), The Walk with Little Amal (NYC, Toronto, US Tour), and most recently Yaa Samar Dance Theater’s world premiere of “Gathering”. Winkfield is passionate about creating work that speaks to the emotional experience of humanity in the face of injustice.
Bruce Monroe, a Dramatists Guild member, has been writing music and lyrics for Alva Rogers since they first met at NYU’s Musical Theatre Writing Program (including the musicals Sunday, Mermaid, and nightbathing) as well as the score for the puppet play/installation Topsy Turvy at MOMA (2023). A Seattle-based composer, lyricist, librettist, orchestrator, dance arranger, music director, and conductor, his Northwest projects include Opera commissions, (Surfer, a comic book odyssey, Command Performance), independent film scores (credits on imdb.com) and audio series scores, for John Longenbaugh’s Battleground Productions (most recently Moonlight and Love Songs). Special Thanks, as always, to the engineering prowess of Dave Pascal. Bruce is married to Seattle Times Arts Writer, and novelist, Moira Macdonald (Storybook Ending).
“Part celestial creature, part sophisticated human” is how Charlotte Lily Gaspard has been described by Faerie Magazine when contemplating the ethereal artist and her work in one of their features. Shadow puppet artist, educator, entertainer, and “bona fide fairy princess” (DUMBO Living), Charlotte’s mission is to activate imaginations and celebrate playfulness wherever she goes. Charlotte is the founder, artistic director and “fanciful mastermind” (Broadway World) behind Midnight Radio Show, a shadow puppet sci-fi fairytale theater company based in Brooklyn, NYC. Charlotte and her collective are known for devising innovative avant-garde enchantments, infused with puppets, poetry, music and dance, for the stage and beyond. Midnight Radio Show is pleased to announce “The Origin of Puccini the Cat”, an illustrated children’s book based on Charlotte’s shadow puppetry and silhouette artwork, is now available from Cool Grove Press. More at: www.MidnightRadioShow.org
Dave Pascal is a Seattle-based musician, producer, and sound designer. He performs as a bassist in theater orchestras, studios, and other music venues. His playing with multiple bands includes several European tours. His work as a composer, producer, sound designer, and music director includes Emmy-winning TV projects, award-winning educational multimedia, and theatrical productions around the U.S.
Emily Grierson (they/them) is a Seattle-based stage manager originally from Western New York. As a stage manager, Emily has had the pleasure of working with artists on theater, dance, and puppetry productions across the country. Recent credits: Songs of the Moon (5th Avenue Educational Tour), Kayfabe (Josh Rice Projects/Chicago International Puppet Festival), Guards at the Taj (ArtsWest), Henry V (Shake on the Lake), DIALOGUE (Spectrum Dance Theatre). They are excited to join the Harlem Doll Palace team!
Marcella Murray is a New York-based theater artist from Augusta, Georgia. She is a playwright, performer, collaborator, and puppeteer. Murray’s work is heavily inspired by the observed ways in which people tend to segregate and reconnect. Performances include The Slow Room, by Annie Dorsen at Performance Space NY; I Don’t Want to Interrupt You Guys, with Leonie Bell and Hyung Seok Jeon at Mabou Mines; Shoot Don’t Talk at St. Ann’s Warehouse/Puppet Lab by Andrew Murdock; Our Bodies Like Dams by Sarah Finn at Mabou Mines; workshop reading of Loom Troll by Karin Keithley Syers at New Dramatists; Rent Party by Amina Henry and Drama of Works; SmithSchmidtSmith by Leonie Bell at The Brick; Sunflower by Sifiso Mabena; Fire in the Head by Christopher Myers with FIAF; Swann, an opera by Tamar-Kali and Carl Hancock Rux; and Other Atlantas: A Prologue created by Marcella Murray at La MaMa. Along with David Neumann and Tei Blow, Murray recently co-created Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed (Obie Special Citation 2020) and Primer for an Impossible Conversation, a digital theater piece which premiered in 2021 at MCA Chicago. They recently premiered the Southern Futures commissioned Rich with History at UNC Chapel Hill’s Center for Performing Arts. Murray is a co-curator of the Object Movement Puppetry Residency. She has been an Artist in Residence at LaMaMa ETC as well as a participant in the EiO Writer’s Room. She is a guest professor of theatre at Sarah Lawrence College.
Mecca Akbar has starred in off-Broadway productions of Pinocchio with New York Children’s Theatre, Tree Haus with the New York Drama Company, as well as the original cast of Sesame Street: The Musical with Rockefeller Productions. She trained at New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts in Chelsea Manhattan, as well as the British Academy for Dramatic Arts’ Midsummer Shakespeare program at Oxford University. Mecca is a rotating marionettist at the Swedish Marionette Theatre in Central Park as well as teaches seasonal puppetry residencies for Lower Manhattan Arts Academy high school. Akbar is also a traveling Product Specialist with Toyota. Fall of 2025 Akbar will rejoin Concrete Temples PACKRAT at the Festival Mondial Desthéâtres de marionettes in Charleville-Mézzières, France.
Thalya I. David (she/her)is a Haitian-American actress from Florida with a BA in Fine Arts at Broward College. She moved to New York(2017) to continue to pursue an acting career and received her BFA in Acting at Marymount Manhattan College(2020). Performed on stage here and there, she debut as a puppeteer in Maria Camia’s Healing Shipment at La MaMa Puppet Festival(2022 & 2023). She has the pleasure to work with Alva Roger’s Doll’s Palace at Dixon Place (2023 & 2024). Performed twice at Object Movement Puppetry Festival performed in From Darkness Gilt by Lim (2022) and The Hood Babies’ Tapes by Beyonce (2025). IG: basiiiq
William PK Carter is a quilter and puppet artist based in Central Valley, New York. They bridge the puppet and fine art worlds by fabricating wondrous creatures that exist at the intersection of queerness and blackness. They received their Bachelor of Science in Studio Art from Skidmore College in 2023, and their work has been exhibited and performed in theaters, galleries, and museums across the east coast. Notable venues include Puppet Showplace Theater (Brookline, MA), La Mama Experimental Theatre Club (New York, NY), Dixon Place (New York, NY), The Old Stone House of Brooklyn (Brooklyn, NY), The Ritz Theatre (Newburgh, NY), and The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga Springs, NY). Carter is the recipient of Skidmore College’s President’s Racial Justice Award (2021), the Van Dewater Memorial Award (2022), and the John P. Heins Award: Outstanding Senior Thesis Exhibition (2023). They are a part of the 2025 cohort of Puppet Showplace’s Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers, and is an upcoming resident artist at Ma’s House (Southampton, NY). WilliamPKCarter.com