The University of Redlands Theatre Arts Department Presents:
*February 17th, 18th, 19th @ 7:30pm
February 20th @ 2:00pm
By Larissa FastHorse
Directed by James & Thomas Johnston
“Very, very funny. Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play skewers liberal pretensions with glee – this clever satire is something for which to be truly thankful.”
- The Hollywood Reporter
“The familiar, whitewashed story of Pilgrims and Native Americans chowing down together gets a delicious roasting from expert farceurs.”
- The New York Times
Show Info
Ah, Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays: when families gather to celebrate the warmth of home, the bounty of the harvest — and a legacy of genocide and violent colonial expansion. Good intentions collide with absurd assumptions in Larissa FastHorse’s wickedly funny satire, as a troupe of terminally “woke” teaching artists scrambles to create a pageant that somehow manages to celebrate both Turkey Day and Native American Heritage Month.
About the Playwright
Larissa FastHorse is a playwright and performing arts advocate illuminating Indigenous processes of artmaking and storytelling as well as Native American perspectives on contemporary life. A member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, FastHorse combines a keen sense of satire and facility with dramatic forms in plays that are funny, incisive, and, at times, deeply unsettling for audiences faced with the realities of Native Americans' experience in the United States.
Larissa FastHorse began her career as a ballet dancer. Before becoming an independent playwright and choreographer, FastHorse worked in the television and film industry as a creative executive at Universal Pictures and Paramount. Her additional works include Cow Pie Bingo (2018), Landless (2015), Cherokee Family Reunion (2012), and Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: A Class
Presentation (2008). She has been commissioned by a number of venues across the country, including the Cornerstone Theater Company, The Public Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, Native Voices at the Autry, and the Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences, among many others.
In addition to playwriting, FastHorse is the co-founder of Indigenous Direction, which advises on theater and film projects that address Native issues, and she speaks widely on how to build sustainable, reciprocal relationships with Native American communities. FastHorse is creating space for Indigenous artists, stories, and experiences in mainstream theater and countering the misrepresentation and erasure of Indigenous concerns in broader society. - MacArthur Foundation
The Thanksgiving Play is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. https://www.concordtheatricals.com/
Playwrights Horizons, Inc., New York City, produced the World Premiere of “THE THANKSGIVING PLAY” in 2018 “THE THANKSGIVING PLAY" was commissioned and originally produced by Artists Repertory Theatre, Damaso Rodriguez, Artistic Director Sarah Horton, Managing Director Portland, Oregon.