The Thanksgiving Play

MacArthur Genius Larissa FastHorse’s shocking satire flips the bird on one of America’s most prolific myths. When a troupe of well-meaning theater artists attempt to put on a culturally sensitive Thanksgiving school pageant, things get messy. Hilarious and poignant, this delicious play skewers everything right, wrong, and politically correct in America by exploring themes of privilege, historical accuracy of navigating these complexities.

The Thanksgiving Play made its Broadway debut at the Hayes Theater in 2023, making Larissa FastHorse the first female Native American playwright to have a play produced on Broadway. FastHorse wrote the play in response to the common notion that her works couldn’t be produced due to the perceived difficulty in finding Native American actors. Through satire and humor, the play addresses the misrepresentation of Native Americans, the lack of indigenous casting, and the challenges of accurately representing indigenous people in American society.