Broadway
After being told her work was “uncastable,” Indigenous playwright Larissa FastHorse set out to create a show with zero minority actors and penned a scathing satire
Thu 20 Apr 2023 07.03 BST
The Thanksgiving Play came about more or less as a dare. When Theater Groups Larissa FastHorse Said Her Indigenous Character Screenplay What Would Crazy Horse Do? was practically “uncastable,” she set about writing a show with zero actors from some minority group. In a slightly discouraging twist, the stunt worked. The Thanksgiving play has become one of the most-produced plays in the United States.
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The work focuses on a quartet of theater nerds who meet in an elementary school classroom to create a dramatic rendition of the Thanksgiving story that will have an appropriate level of accuracy and sensitivity. When it turns out that the professional actor hired to provide the writers’ room with an indigenous voice isn’t actually Native American, the classroom becomes a hectic sentry workshop, and the meta-production plummets headlong into a state of absurdity it had viewers at a recent masked matinee howling into their N95s. FastHorse’s work is a scandalously entertaining turduck of identity politics and humor that takes aim at the buffoons of the white-run theater world and the paralysis that can accompany overanalysis. Audiences will come for the jokes about virtue signs and “vegan allies” and leave with a queasy feeling of confusion and self-loathing.
“I really want the audience to feel invited to the conversation and have fun,” FastHorse said over a video call from the New York apartment where she was staying ahead of the play’s premiere Thursday. “I don’t want people to come in and feel like they’re being attacked or hit on the head.”
FastHorse estimates that 80% of the lines that are too dumb to be true come from real interactions. Jackson, the serious “yoga guy” who wears a bulky scarf and tends to apologize for “meditating on my feelings,” was based on a yoga teacher FastHorse had in Los Angeles, where she lives. “He was everywhere as a white guy,” she said. “I drew from the way he expressed himself and the way he talked about tribal peoples in general. He was really excited that I was an Indian and that I was in his presence.”
D’Arcy Carden, Scott Foley and Chris Sullivan in The Thanksgiving Play. Photo: Joan Marcus
FastHorse, who belongs to the Sicangu-Lakota Nation, was raised in Pierre, South Dakota. Her mother, a school librarian, and her father, a law enforcement officer with a degree in sociology, closely monitored her cultural consumption. PBS programming was legal, so she invited herself to appear on Keeping Up Appearances and Monty Python, among other British comedies that would inform her wry humor. Her heritage also shaped her sardonic sensibilities. “Native Americans live like the world’s longest dark comedy,” FastHorse said. “I mean, we just have to laugh.”
In the nearly ten years since FastHorse wrote The Thanksgiving Play, she has continually worked to update it and incorporate references to current thinking and theatrical styles. During the pandemic, she reworked the script to take place on Zoom rather than in a classroom. Keanu Reeves and Alia Shawkat performed it for a fundraiser for the Actors Fund, directed by Leigh Silverman.
The director of this production Rachel Chavkin and the quartet of actors – Scott Foley, D’Arcy Carden, Katie Finneran and Chris Sullivan – were all involved in inventing new jokes and throwing catchphrases to throw them into the version that opens Thursday night. “Now that we’re out of post-racial society, we can’t be blind to the differences,” says one character as the group struggles over who to cast for their play. “Before we were blind to racing,” another chimes in with smugness, “but now we see it fully. It is our duty as allies.”
It’s a disturbing work that FastHorse developed to leave viewers with more questions than answers. But she says she has one main point she hopes breaks the laughter: that a supposedly respectful approach isn’t appropriate. “What I’ve seen is a dangerous trend in this particular world, which is the role of doing nothing,” she said. “There’s this thinking, you know, we’re marching, but then we’re just going to walk away because it’s too complicated.” She quotes a white man in charge of a theater organization as telling her, “By doing nothing, we will Part of the solution.” That feeling comes to groundbreaking life in the show’s bold climax.
FastHorse, a former professional ballet dancer, is on the verge of becoming the first Indigenous playwright to have a show on Broadway. “Native Americans traditionally talk about what’s going to happen in seven generations,” she said. “I have to make sure this is a better path for the people who come after me.” She is equally interested in how her work will impact today’s generation of theatergoers. “I’m a neuroscience nerd. And so, in the way I use humor in satire, I’m trying to help you rewire the way your brain works,” she said. “Hopefully, after you’re done with my piece, your brain is still trying to figure out where to put all of this.”
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