Puppetopia 2025: The Harlem Doll Palace
PUPPETOPIA: THE HARLEM DOLL PALACE May 21-June 1, 2025
Created by Alva Rogers and directed by Ashley Winkfield
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.
See all three Puppetopia 2025 productions—The Harlem Doll Palace, Variations on (the) Water, and Rhynoceron—with our special $90 Package!
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:
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.