Touchstone Theatre to Present Original Show LANGUAGE OF DOLLS

Touchstone Theatre, the region’s only ensemble-based theatre, will present Language of Dolls – an original production created and performed by New York City theater artists Lizzie Olesker, Peggy Pettitt, and Louise Smith. This collaborative theatre piece questions how identity is formed using dolls as a way into deeper understandings of each other and American history. Language of Dolls performs March 5-8 in Touchstone’s 75-seat theatre on the SouthSide of Bethlehem.

Language of Dolls follows three older women friends who come to a cabin in the woods to re-connect. Over the course of one night, these three older women eat, laugh, argue, dance, dream, and share their unexpected stories. Together, they question how their racial and social identities were formed, and how their personal histories have been shaped and influenced. This culminates in the discovery of each of their inner “soul” dolls, revealing a part of themselves they may have forgotten or perhaps never known.  Through their connected encounter with one another, they find the restorative power of friendship and its true ability to transform.

Language of Dolls explores how we come to know ourselves as social beings through education, family culture, and play. It acknowledges the subtle and overt ways that we are taught about life expectations and opportunities, as well as how to think of ourselves in relation to the larger world. “After forty-plus years of knowing one another, we intentionally began a dialogue about our identities as one Black woman and two white women,” say the co-creators. “In 2022, we saw the exhibit Black Dolls at The New York Historical and it profoundly affected the direction of our work. The dolls on display haunted and spoke to us in their silent presence. Their hidden histories inspired us to create our own “soul dolls” from found materials, discovering how each one possesses their own language of poetic possibility.”

Following each performance, audience members may participate in a guided discussion related to the issues and questions that the piece raises for them personally and in community. 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 difficult conversations?