I am a big fan of not re-writing history. Fact. But, I find that some images hold strong associations that can provide mental short-cuts for audience members to a specific culture, a period of time, even an individual or a type of individual. Right, these are all obviously at play in the world of advertising, packaging, and Hollywood. Stereotypical associations that cement over time and come back into use until they have replaced history in the cultural mind. What is the use of rewriting history (or the future, which also looks and sounds and smells a certain way without reference to anything actual except the projections of advertisers and movie makers) in a piece of theatre? Don’t we need those short cuts? Don’t we find them useful to create a mood, to set the time and date, to allude to a cultural or political era instantly? Even referencing our own culture can be as simple as a song cue, a combination of colours, the mention of a (supposedly) national dish (think “haggis” think “hot dog” think “bratwurst” etc.)

I wonder, what is at stake in using the already reproduced symbol or signal of that epoch, that Diva, that city? Is there a way to remake associations that are based on, for example, scholarly research and a little hard-copy fact finding? However, if no one gets the point and don’t believe you because Lincoln wears top hats and ONLY top hats then….what’s the point of trying for accuracy or even ethical decency to those academic accounts? Is it hypocritical to misuse history before your own time has past? I’ve given nothing to nostalgia but taken everything from it.

I love these old dolls. The masks of dolls is a totally cliche art-house thing but who cares, they are spooky and beautiful and mysterious. They are Victorian England, they are middle-class 1930’s, they are old-timey, they are “Little House on the Prairie” when they are beautiful and they are “Interview with a Vampire” when they are elegant with blue eyes. They are bygone days. They are simpler “back when” times. They are lovely and they are also potentialyl haunted/haunting. They are for girls. They are for little boys in velvet short-pants like the dead boy in “Turn of the Screw.” Him. They are like that. And that and that. They are nostalgia. But what isn’t to like.

In 1943 children played with dolls like this one, a very popular make of "Infant."