The Serious Business of Doll Play with Franklin Furnace on Wednesday 16 November 2022
Channel: HowlRound Theatre Commons
Date: 2022-11-17

Franklin Furnace presents the conversation The Serious Business of Doll Play livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Wednesday 16 November 2022 at 3 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 5 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 6 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4).

Presented via Zoom on Franklin Furnace Archive’s digital LOFT, The Serious Business of Doll Play features a conversation/discussion illustrated with historic and contemporary objects, photographs, portraits, and performance stills limning the legacy of Lenon Holder Hoyte, known as Aunt Len. Artist and playwright Alva Rogers and doll, puppetry, and object performance scholar Dr. Paulette Richards, in discussion with the public, will provide historical context and a contemporary view of object performance, women’s work, the seminal business of doll play, and demystifying challenging aspects of Alva’s play.

Lenon and her husband purchased the three-story brownstone at 6 Hamilton Terrace between Convent and St. Nicholas Avenues in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in 1938, and it became the home of the museum. Hoyte’s passion for doll collecting began in 1962 when she was asked to organize a doll show fund-raiser for Harlem Hospital. Hoyte then turned part of her brownstone into Aunt Len’s Doll and Toy Museum. The public spaces of her home museum consisted of narrow passageways winding through the ground floor and basement. From 1970 (according to Dolls Magazine) or 1974 (if your source is the New York Times) through 1994, Hoyte served as the full-time executive director, president, curator, and tour guide. Admission fees never exceeded $2 for adults and 50¢ for children. At one time, the museum held close to 6,000 dolls ranging in size from one inch to three feet. Fine French bisque dolls cavorted alongside presidents and first ladies, Shirley Temple, Betsy Wetsy, Barbie, and Cabbage Patch Kids. Hoyte’s collection included extremely rare and singular nineteenth-century Black dolls, including rag dolls made by enslaved people from scraps of muslin and feed bags and a pair of papier-mâché dolls named Lillian and Leo, which were created by Leo Moss, a 19th-century Black handyman from Atlanta. Legend claimed that after separating from his wife and children, Moss only made sad dolls. Lillian and Leo had tears running down their cheeks.

https://howlround.com/happenings/livestreaming-conversation-serious-business-doll-play