NATIVE AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT LARISSA FASTHORSE: HER “THE THANKGIVING PLAY” IS FULL OF SUGAR AND MEDICINE

Playwright Larissa FastHorse

The Red Barn Theatre in Key West has had a lot of firsts in its illustrious 45-year history. But with their current main stage offering, they have added a pretty prestigious entry to that long list.

Currently running through March 30, the Barn is presenting “The Thanksgiving Play”, written by Larissa Fasthorse, the first Native American woman to have a hit show produced on Broadway. It has become one of the most-produced plays in America this season.

Fasthorse, who belongs to the Sicangu Lakota Nation, was born in San Francisco, but left there as an infant.

“I grew up in South Dakota,” she said, “where my Lakota people are from, but I was adopted at a young age – an open adoption to a white family who had worked on the reservation for a long time. I was always raised very aware of my Lakota identity and my Lakota culture, and they brought a lot of mentors into my life, as well as tribal elders, to help me stay connected.”

Fasthorse first started a career as a ballet dancer, but an injury forced her to rethink her life track. Returning to an earlier interest in writing proved to be the key to enormous success.

Fasthorse created a trilogy of cultural plays, commissioned and produced by Cornerstone Theater Company, a nationally-recognized company based in Los Angeles. The first was “Urban Rez”. The second was “Native Nation”, which became the largest Indigenous theater production in the history of American theater. That opened all the doors, with productions at prestigious theaters like The Public, Yale Rep, the Guthrie, the Geffen, Kennedy Center, Baltimore’s Center Stage, and Berkeley Rep, among many others.

And she’s recently moved into film and television, writing and working for Universal, Paramount, NBC, and now Apple TV and “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan’s Taylor Made Productions.

“The Thanksgiving Play” was inspired by the state of Florida’s banning the teaching of anything that might cause a child to feel guilty or be upset…particularly the history of Indigenous Peoples.

“I call it ‘performative wokeness,” Fasthorse said. “These are white folks, liberal folks, trying hard to do everything right, but getting everything wrong.”

Which is the very premise of “The Thanksgiving Play”, a hilarious play infused with looks at tough topics, about a group of well-intentioned white adults trying to create a children’s play about the Pilgrim’s first Thanksgiving while blending it with the viewpoint of the Native Americans they supposedly interacted with on that day. But their terminal wokeness thwarts them at every turn until it all explodes with a hilarious ending that must be seen.”

“The thing that I keep saying,” Fasthorse said, “and that is very important to me in this play, is, first, it’s fun, and you get to have a good time in the theater. And second, I would say that’s the sugar, and then there’s the medicine. It’s satire. It’s a comedy within a satire The satire is the medicine.”

The Red Barn’s production clearly has a large dose of the sugar, with audiences laughing out loud throughout the play. But the message is also crystal clear, which makes the play all the more potent, honoring not only her ancestors but also offering – in a very funny way – a commentary on how far into absurdity wokeness has traveled.

Tickets for “The Thanksgiving Play” are available at redbarntheatre.com or by calling 305-296-9911.