Fresh Air - Best Of: The EarRegulars / Playwright Larissa FastHorse

Episode Date: November 25, 2023

We hear some live music and conversation from two of the best traditional jazz musicians around, trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso and guitarist Matt Munisteri. In 2007, they founded the band The EarRegulars, who play Sunday nights at a very old bar in Greenwich Village called the EAR Inn. They have a new live album.David Bianculli reviews the new season of Fargo. Then we hear from playwright Larissa FastHorse. She's the first known Native American woman to have a show on Broadway with The Thanksgiving Play. It's a satire that pokes fun at political correctness and the way we talk – and think about – indigenous people in America.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Tanya Mosley with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, live music and conversation from two of the best traditional jazz musicians around, trumpeter John Eric Kelso and guitarist Matt Munisteri. In 2007, they founded the band The Ear Regulars, who play Sunday nights at a very old bar in Greenwich Village called The Ear Inn. That's E-A-R. The Ear Regulars have a new live album called Live at the Ear Inn. Also, playwright Larissa Fast Horse.

She's the first known Native American woman to have a show on Broadway with The Thanksgiving Play. And it was a long road to get there. It's a satire that pokes fun at political correctness and the way we talk and think about indigenous people in America. Fast Horse is currently working on a reimagining of Peter Pan. And David Bianculli reviews the new season of Fargo. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally,

and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today, or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley, and you're in for a treat today. Trumpeter John Eric Kelso and guitarist Matt Munisteri are here to play and talk about the music they make in their band, The Ear Regulars. That's E-A-R, Regulars. They perform jazz mostly from the 20s through the 40s,

and they have a new live album. They spoke with Fresh Air's Sam Brigger, who will take it from here. Sunday nights, I find myself feeling jealous of New Yorkers. That's because every Sunday night at a small old bar in the West Village called the Ear Inn, you can hear some really amazing music.

Vibrant and vital jazz, even though some of the repertoire is a hundred years old. The band, the Ear Regulars, was founded by our guests John Eric Kelso and Matt Munisteri and is led by Kelso. The band is usually a four-piece combo with friends sitting in. They set up in the corner of the ear-in and pass the hat at the set break, which is kind of remarkable considering that these are some of the best jazz musicians around. I first heard the Irregulars on YouTube, where their weekly concerts have been pretty well documented, and I used to visit those videos during the pandemic when I needed a pick-me-up, because when you listen to this band, you can't help but smile.

The Irregulars have just put out their first live album. It's called Live at the Ear Inn, and with the sound of the bar crowd in the background, you can close your eyes and almost believe you're there. John Eric Kelso and Matt Munisteri founded the Irregulars in 2007, but that band is just one of the many credits to their names. They've both recorded albums under their own names and with their own bands and appear on countless artists' albums. They are first-call session musicians whenever someone is recording any sort of traditional jazz and other genres of music. They were kind enough to bring their instruments today for our conversation. But before we get to that, let's hear a track from their new album.

This is I Double Dare You, first recorded by Woody Herman in 1937. ¶¶ That's the song I Double Dare You from The Irregular's new album Live at the Ear Inn. Our guests are the founding members of the band, John Eric Kelso and Matt Munisteri. Welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. So why did you guys want to do a live album? The last album you did was recorded in a studio.

Well, I've wanted to do a live album really since we started the gig there, but I've always been a little concerned that it might be too loud in there at times to do a live album. But sometimes you can hear a pin drop, and sometimes we have some people that go there just because it's a bar, and they act like people in a bar.

That's my little mantra I tell myself if I start to get upset about it being noisy. Start getting particularly dark, yeah. But yeah, we've been thinking about it for 16 years, and we finally got around to it. It also, I think that room sounds really good. It sure does, yeah. And we thought that when we used to play there late nights,

and there would be no one in the place, and it was just the room sounds good. It's wood and a lot of knickknacks and, I guess, beer-soaked floorboards. That's good for acoustics? Beer-soaked floors? Apparently, yeah. And also just the idea of doing a live album with this band

is appealing because of the energy that we generate there as far as the spontaneity in this group. It's hard to recreate that in a studio setting. You kind of can, but it's not the same as just the actual bouncing off of each other as we do at the year. Well, I'd like to ask you to do a song. You said that you would do No One Else But You, which is on the, it's the third track of the album. What can you tell us about the song before you place it? It started off, it was originally played by Louis Armstrong, and it's written by Don Redman, who was a well-known arranger and

bandleader and composer in those early days. And later on, it was played by one of our heroes, Ruby Braff, and another hero, George Barnes, on guitar. They had a great quartet, and we kind of borrow mostly from their version it, as far as just the format. Okay, well, we're going to hear No One Else But You with my guest, guitarist Matt Munisteri and trumpeter John Eric Kelso. And they also play this on their new album, Live at the Ear Inn, with their band, The Irregulars. So let's hear it. One, two, one, two, three. Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. That was great. That was the song No One Else But You

from John Eric Kelso on trumpet and Matt Munisteri on guitar. That's on their album with their band The Irregulars. The new album is called Live at the Ear Inn. When I was listening to that, there was a point in the song where, John, you were doing this like descending line. And Matt, you played chords that sort of descended along with them. Did you know he was going to do that, or did you just hear it in the moment and follow along?

Yes, I knew. I wish. I feel like this is asking a magician how he does his tricks. We don't really have very many arrangements, but this is sort of the melody of the tune, and it's also taken, as John said, largely on that arrangement. We were really borrowing from our two heroes, Ruby Braff and George Barnes' version. Right.

So let me ask you about Ruby Braff and George Barnes. Did you, I think, John, you knew Ruby Braff, right? Yes, yeah. I got to know him. It was a pretty amazing thing for me. I was one of my heroes. And shortly after I moved to New York in 1989, moving from Detroit, we got to hang out quite a bit. It was a really wonderful time for me to get to know and talk to one of my heroes like that. Is there anything in particular that you might have talked to them about that he taught you about how he played the trumpet that's influenced the way you play? Well, he didn't really – he wasn't trying to teach me anything specifically about how to play the trumpet.

And he would sit down at the piano. He was actually a pretty decent piano player for a cornet player. And he would say, hey, do you know this song? And start to play something. And I'd say, no. And he says, good. I'm going to teach it to you right now. So he would show me songs.

And he would show me chords that he figured out from some of the masters, like Teddy Wilson. He said, I finally figured out what Teddy Wilson is doing on the bridge to Sweet Lorraine, and he'd show it to me. So he taught me in those kind of ways. And mostly we were just hung out, and I listened to him tell his great anecdotes. And, you know, just a lot of fun. Well, although you're admitting that the piece you just did has some arrangements, I mean, one of the amazing things about the arrangements on the new album is they're really not arrangements.

Like, you guys are playing together. The horns are doing collective improvisation in the sort of style, I guess, that was originated in New Orleans. And I just wanted to hear some of that from the album. I was thinking that we could play part of the song, I'm Coming Virginia. And we're going to cut in a little bit to the track. Matt, you start playing rhythm, and then one of the irregular, Scott Robinson, comes in with something, first of all, that sounds like a clarinet, but it's not, right? He likes to play a lot of sort of odder instruments. What is that instrument he's playing? It's called a tarragato, and I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it absolutely perfectly,

but it's a Hungarian folk instrument, basically, and used primarily in Hungarian folk music. And I like to think of it as kind of like a wooden soprano sax, like a kinder, gentler soprano sax, at least in Scott's hands it is. It's kind of scary in most people's hands because it's not a factory-made kind of precise instrument. It's like you have to know a guy up on the hill to get one. Yeah. And, you know, there actually is a real connection to traditional jazz history and the tarragato. And, John, you might have to correct me on this, but was Scott's first tarragato one that he got from Joe Moreni? That's right. Yeah, that's what I thought.

So Joe Moreni was a Hungarian-American clarinetist who played with Louis Armstrong's All-Stars in the 1950s? 60s. He was in his last version of the All-Stars. Yeah. And we all knew Moraney also, and Scott and he were close. And I think he turned Scott onto the terregato, and he's since had several made in Hungary. Including a contrabass Terragotto

which is maybe the only one in existence as far as we know. Let's hope. No, no, no. We kid. Let's hear this. We're going to hear John Eric Kelso come in on the melody

and weaving around him, doing an improvisation, will be on trombone John Allred and on the tarragato Scott Robinson. And the bass player on this is Neil Minor. Thank you. ¶¶ We're listening to Sam Brigger's conversation with trumpeter John Eric Kelso and guitarist Matt Munisteri. Their new album with their band, The Ear Regulars, is called Live at the Ear Inn. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Let's get back to Sam Brigger's interview with trumpeter John Eric Kelso and guitarist Matt Munisteri. They're the founding members of the traditional jazz band, the Irregulars.

They play Sunday nights at the Ear Inn in New York's Greenwich Village, hence the name. They're joined by a rotating cast of top jazz musicians on bass and other horns. It's usually a four- or five-piece band. But don't let the word traditional fool you into believing that this is some sort of nostalgia act. Although the songs they play are old, a lot of them are from the 20s and 30s, their performances are as exciting and lively as anything out there. They have a new album. It's called Live at the Ear Inn. I'd like to ask you to play another song here, if you will.

You suggested that maybe you do the song Tishomingo Blues. This is from the Irregulars album called Live at the Ear Inn. Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. That was great. That was Tishomingo Blues, played by trumpeter John Eric Kelso and Matt Munisteri on guitar. They're here because they have a new CD with their band, The Irregulars, that's called Live at the Ear Inn. That was really wonderful. Thank you for playing that.

I think it's perhaps time to talk about Mutes, hearing that song. Don't reach for that dial, everybody. Mutes? What? You want to set the mute button on our – Next we're going to be talking about minds. Trumpet players like to accessorize.

Isn't that right, John? You have all sorts of things you stick at the end of your trumpet. Oh, yes. Yes, this is a fetish for trumpet players. You have all sorts of things you stick at the end of your trumpet. Oh, yes. Yes, this is a fetish for trumpet players. And for me, it started pretty much right when I started playing trumpet at age 10. I was listening to my parents' old 78 RPM records from the swing era, and immediately it caught my ear. Guys like Cootie Williams with the Duke Ellington band and with the Benny Goodman small bands, that he was using a plunger and making these kind of growling sounds and wah-wah sounds.

And that thrilled me to no end. Like an actual plunger, like a toilet plunger, right? Yeah, yeah. We like to call them sink plungers mostly, you know. Mostly the trumpet uses the smaller. I'm hoping they're not used whether they're sink or toilet plungers. Nah, nah, yeah. Maybe I'll demonstrate the little Pixie Mute by itself and with the plunger and without the Pixie Mute just so you understand with that.

Yeah, that'd be great. Would that be good? Okay. All right. So this is playing with just the Pixie Mute. Okay. So now this is with the Pixie Mute and the Sync Plunger. So you get the idea of how you get some different tonal sounds that way.

Oh, and the plunger without the Pixie. That's really cool. Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for doing that. Sure. Well, I wanted to end with a really beautiful song that you guys did on your last album, which is In the Land of Beginning Again. This is a song called Smoke Rings.

John Eric Calso and Matt Munisteri, thank you so much for coming in today. It was a real treat. Thank you, Sam. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Jazz musicians John Eric Kelso and Matt Munisteri, speaking with Fresh Air's Sam Brigger. Their new album with their band The Ear Regulars is called Live at the Ear Inn. Every two years for a decade now, on average,

writer-producer Noah Hawley has created new TV miniseries editions of Fargo, inspired by the 1996 Coen Brothers movie. Each edition has run for a single season on FX, featuring an entirely new cast, setting, and storyline. The new 10-episode season 5 of Fargo began this Tuesday on FX with a double-header premiere and will run weekly. Episodes are also available the next day on Hulu. This season stars Juno Temple from Ted Lasso and Jon Hamm from Mad Men in the Morning Show.

Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review. When the first edition of Noah Hawley's version of Fargo was announced back in 2014, I was intensely skeptical. First, I'd loved the movie Fargo and wasn't sure its spirit could be recaptured. Second, I'd never even heard of Noah Hawley, who had been a writer on the TV series Bones. So even if bringing Fargo to television was a possibility, I didn't have any faith that he was the right person to do it. I couldn't have been more wrong,

and for more times in a row than I ever dreamed. That first Fargo, starring Martin Freeman and Billy Bob Thornton, was brilliant, hilarious, dark, and intoxicatingly unpredictable. It wasn't a retelling of the movie, just a faithful exploration and echo of its spirit. And after sticking that landing, Hawley doubled down and did it again and again and again. He kept coming up with new iterations of Fargo, each separate from the rest like an umbrella anthology series. I've loved them all, and this is my favorite yet. Noah Hawley wrote or co-wrote all ten episodes and directed many of them. Critics were provided the first six,

which are enough for me to proclaim Fargo one of the very best TV offerings of the year. Juno Temple, so sparkly and effervescent in Ted Lasso, stars as a completely different character here. Dorothy Dot Lion, a seemingly unimposing Minnesota housewife and mother. We meet her with her daughter at a junior high school board meeting. But when the meeting devolves into a giant brawl, Dot fights fiercely to get her daughter to safety.

Once she gets outside, she's grabbed by the police and thrown into a cop car. The deputy is played by Richa Morjani, the star of Never Have I Ever. She's behind the wheel, and Dot, played by Juno Temple, is handcuffed in the back seat and leaning forward to begin a conversation. Ma'am, I'm sorry, could you... I'm worried about my daughter. We just saw her mama carted away in handcuffs. Well, you should have thought about that before you tased the officer. Should have thought. Oh, boy.

I hope my daughter don't see her mama carted away in handcuffs. What's the world coming to is all I'm saying. Neighbor against neighbor. That... I agree with you there. We were just trying, me and my girl, to get out. School board meeting, my ASS. And then Mr. Abernathy, the math teacher, he came at me like something from a zombie movie.

Which don't come at a mama lion when she's got her cub. You know what I mean? But the officer, that... He was just wrong place, wrong time. That arrest sets this new season of Fargo in motion. That's partly because Dot has married into a wealthy family, and her mother-in-law Lorraine, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, already drips with disapproval. Leigh is outstanding here, like an even more imperious Katharine Hepburn. But everyone in this cast is a treat and a bonus.

David Rizdahl from Oppenheimer plays Dot's husband, Wayne, who's sweet and supportive. Dave Foley from The Kids in the Hall and News Radio plays the family attorney, Danish Graves, who's ruthless. All of them are at Lorraine's dinner table the night of the school board meeting, after Dot has been arrested, booked, and released. What were you doing there in the first place? I mean, it was a school board meeting. I'm on the committee for the new library.

We're trying to raise money to expand thrillers and mysteries. Lee Child and the like. Can't you just give money like a normal person? Come on now, Ma. We don't have... I mean, I make a good wage, but... You have a trust. Just talk to Danish. Nothing frivolous, of course, which thrillers. You might want to think that through a little more. Or here's a thought. Write your own Pulp Fictioniction now that you're an outlaw. The other plot line set in motion by Dot's outlaw status has to do with her mysterious past, which becomes an issue once her fingerprints are in the National Law Enforcement Database. Several people end up looking for her,

and one of them, who doesn't even have a line of dialogue until episode two, is North Dakota Sheriff Roy Tillman, played by John Hamm. He sure is worth the wait, though. Sheriff Tillman operates by his own rules. That's made clear the first time he's visited by a pair of FBI agents out to rein him in. Jessica Pauley as Agent Meyer, and Nick Gomez as Agent Joaquin. Agent Joaquin. as Agent Joaquin. Agent Joaquin. It's Joaquin.

This is Agent Meyer. We're new in the Fargo office. We thought we'd come by, see why you aren't enforcing any of our laws. What laws? Well, you know, gun laws, drug laws, any of a half dozen other American laws passed and ratified by the United States government that you don't seem to recognize. Well, Agent Shaquene, I think you'll find that

there is no one on God's green earth who is a greater enforcer of the laws of this land than Roy Tillman. Why do I feel like there's a but here? But what you need to know is that I am law of the land. Elected by the residents of this county to interpret and enforce the Constitution given unto us by Almighty God. The special thrills in this edition of Fargo include the entertaining resourcefulness of Dot, the unexpected alliances of several characters, the fiery confrontations when dangerous adversaries finally come face to face,

and, as always, the sudden eruptions of humor and violence, sometimes at the same instant. I don't know how Noah Hawley and his team keep pulling off each new season of Fargo, but somehow they do. David Bianculli is professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the new season of Fargo, which began this week on FX. Coming up, playwright Larissa Fast Horse talks about her satirical comedy, The Thanksgiving Play. Fast Horse became the first Native American woman known to have a play produced on Broadway. This is Fresh Air Weekend. On the first day of Thanksgiving, the natives gave to me a pumpkin in a pumpkin patch. On the second day of Thanksgiving, the natives gave to me

two turkey gobblers and a pumpkin in a pumpkin patch. On the third day of Thanksgiving, the natives gave to me three native headdresses, two turkey gobblers, and a pumpkin in a pumpkin patch. That's a song from the opening scene of the theater production, The Thanksgiving Play. It ran earlier this year on Broadway and was written by my guest, Larissa Fasthorse, the first known Native American woman playwright to produce a Broadway production. The Thanksgiving play is a satire that focuses on four well-meaning white people trying to put on a politically correct holiday school production for Native American Heritage Month. They even hire who they believe is a Native American actor, but later discover she is also white. During its off-Broadway

run, it became one of the 10 most produced plays in America, with runs at universities and community theaters. But the success for Fast Horse comes after years of trying and failing to get theaters to consider stories that center Native American characters. It was only after Thanksgiving play that major doors began to open. Larissa Fast Horse is of the Sichangu Lakota Nation. Her latest play, For the People, ran earlier this month at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and centers around a Native community fighting for grant money to create a wellness center. And this winter, Fast Horse is taking on the musical version of the classic Peter Pan, providing a keen eye on revising some of the story's problematic depictions of Native Americans.

Larissa Fast Horse, welcome to Fresh Air. For those who have not seen Thanksgiving play, can you list off some of the issues that these characters are grappling with as they're trying to produce this play for Native Heritage Month. Yeah, which, by the way, happy Native American Heritage Month. It is right now. All of November. So many people don't realize, but it is. Yeah. So these folks are trying to create a play that honors Native American Heritage Month and Thanksgiving somehow without any Native American people in it. So it's clearly grappling with erasure of indigenous voices and trying to create for us without us, which is still a constant problem. And they're talking a lot about Thanksgiving itself,

which the history of Thanksgiving is such a wild mess of muckiness. I mean, it just, it is not clear. What is so interesting about the way the play is written kind of speaks to what you're saying is like, people can see from your point of view what it's like to sit in whiteness, but also the characters are so over the top playing performative progressives in a way it feels like everyone can be in on the joke too. It's not making fun of, it's like laughing with, not at. Was that your intent as well?

Yeah, for sure. I wanted it to be something fun. I love comedy. I love theater because we come into a room together and we experience something with the same breath. And comedy uses a lot of breath, right? We do a lot of, even if you're not laughing out loud, which people fortunately do in this show, people are breathing and inhaling and exhaling in these exciting ways.

And so it was important to me that it's just funny, that it's funny to everybody, that anyone can come into the room, including super woke white people, and they can enjoy what they see on stage and they can have fun and they can laugh. I've told this story before, but there's this what I call the unifying joke. So in the very first few minutes of the show, there's what I call the unifying joke that applies to everybody. It's just a silly joke that you don't have to be any particular color or, you know, political whatever to understand. And I remember sitting in the very first preview in New York before the Broadway production, and the unifying joke was said, and the audience burst out laughing. And I said to myself, this is the sound of your life changing.

You know, what is ironic about the success of Thanksgiving play is that for a long time, as you mentioned, you really couldn't get these theaters to consider stories of Native people that were central, but this is an all-white cast that got you to Broadway, and I know that that's your dream. Are you proud of that, or is that just like, okay, this is what needed to happen in the moment, but there'll be other times that I'll be back with an all-Native cast? Yeah, you know, I'm incredibly proud of this piece. It's, like I said, it does the things I want to do. It brings so much joy to so many people. I mean, I hear from people around the country endlessly on the social media platforms. And it makes so many people think. And it's,

honestly, from what people tell me, you know, it's changed a lot of lives. I'm super proud of it. But of course, I want to be on Broadway with Native American actors. That would be fantastic. You know, I'm really proud that I got to be, you know, the first Native American, known Native American woman. I guarantee you there was another Native American female writer before this, but they didn't identify that way for various reasons. You're also taking on a classic, as I mentioned, the musical version of Peter Pan

directed by Lonnie Price, which goes on tour in December. And you were brought on to help tackle the musical depictions of Native Americans. There are quite a few racist tropes. Yeah, actually, I was just brought on to help rewrite the script. And so it's in all ways is interesting because folks focus on the Native part, obviously, because of my name and all. But, you know, people forget my first job was the fact that it was a three-hour, two-intermission musical.

And we're talking about the original Jerome Robbins on Broadway that starred, you know, most people know Kathy Rigby from it most recently. Mary Martin did it originally. And so it was a three-hour, two-intermission musical. People don't do those families anymore. You know, it's just not what we do. So actually my very first job was to take it down to one intermission, two-hour musical. And that was a huge job because you can't just chop out, you know, the pirates. Yeah, you can't just say, oh, we'll just cut out the pirates or we'll just cut out Neverland or, you know, you can't do that.

It's all woven together. So it meant having to go scene by scene and page by page and carefully just cull and cull and cull and cull until we got down to a two-hour show with one intermission. It also meant restructuring the whole show to move that intermission somewhere else because we couldn't have it where originally there was a really early intermission for the first one and the second one was much later. So that was my first job. And then after that was tackling the Native American characters. Well, at the time it was called Tiger Lily and the Tribe. And then also tackling, to be quite honest, the bigger job was tackling the depiction of women. Women in the past in this show never spoke to each other, except for Tiger Lily in Ugga Wugga.

The women didn't have songs. You know, it was a very, very male-heavy show. And it certainly still is. But I've done a lot of work to make sure that the women are much fuller characters. You know, it's pretty clear the stereotypes in a classic like Peter Pan and how they could be taken as offensive. Can you talk a little more specifically about some of the offensive or hurtful things within it that you identify? The Native people come into play in Neverland, right? And so Neverland is a magical place, and it's a place where no one ever grows old.

It's a place of fairies and pirates and dancing animals and things. And so just the idea of indigenous or traditionally Native American people, like Tiger Lily and her tribe being there, is already just a problem. We're real people. Why are we in Neverland? You know, the Lost Boys are boys that fell out of their prams as infants and somehow ended up there, you know. So, it doesn't make sense for us to be in the same realm as what's treated as magical creatures. Hook is certainly not a realistic depiction of a pirate. He's a larger-than-life sort of magical tale happening. So, the presence of us in Neverland was already a problem. And then, if you look carefully at the source material, not just the source material, the source material of this play, it was just assumed and never said why. It was just assumed that we're all trying to kill the Indians and Indians are trying to kill us.

And if you look, there's no reason. That's just how the world is. White, you know, Lost Boys, which were traditionally white, were trying to kill the Indians and Indians were trying to kill them. And that was just it. And it was accepted as truth without any question. And so I said, okay, how do we work within the parameter of Neverland and change this? And I also wanted to think forward, right? So I'm thinking ahead to the future and saying, how do we also make it so folks doing the show further on do not have to portray red face, which is non-Indigenous people playing Indigenous roles?

Because we perhaps in this production could afford to hire all Native American people, but not everybody can, and not everybody has that casting available to them. So what I chose to do with this play is I took Tiger Lily, and I kept her name because it's iconic and beloved, and she's now the leader of this tribe of people. But each of those people is the last of an extinct culture somewhere in the world. So it makes sense why they're in this world. Right. So they come here because they never grow old. So they can preserve their culture in a place where they're safe and hope that one day they can return to this world and bring their culture with them. And so I use the magic of Neverland as a positive for these people, as somewhere where they can

survive and preserve and grow and keep their culture going until they find another home for it. This is so interesting because, of course, the depictions of natives, that's very obvious, but were there parts of the play that, like, once you went line by line, you realized there were these things, like women not talking to each other, that you could finally see that maybe you didn't even see in this classic. Yeah, for sure. I mean, now, to be fair, I hadn't never read it before I was offered the job. It was something I... But had you seen like depictions on television or you knew about it?

I knew about it. And I honestly had avoided it all my life because all I'd heard was the negative and the way that it caused so much harm to Native people throughout the century, the century that's been around, well, more than that, right? It's been around since the 1800s. So, you know, I'd only heard about the harm. So I'd avoided it. And I'd seen it once when I was in ballet school in St. Louis, and we were sitting in the very back of the Muni Theater, which is like a 10,000-seat outdoor theater. So I don't have really any memories from it. And that's the only time I've really encountered it. So when I was offered the job, and to be honest, you know, I was brought in late. You know, I was the

last person of the creative team to be brought in. My agent, you know, told me about it, and I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope. I don't want to get anywhere near that. Because of the harm. You just felt like you didn't want to. And I can't tell you what they are, but I had been working on a movie version, a TV version of two classic musicals that I was, quote, fixing and updating. And I was like, I don't want to be known as a fixer. Like, that's just, I want to do my own work, you know. And I said, and I just don't want to be involved in it. It's harmful, et cetera. And he said to me, well, look, you haven't read it. I told him I had never read

it. He said, just, these are legit people. Lonnie's a fantastic director. You know, these are fantastic networks, tours, is doing the tour. You know, they're great producers. Just read it so you can say you've done your due diligence and on Monday we'll pass. It's like, fine, I'll read it. I was just, I was shocked. I had no idea how good it is. I mean, there's a reason this material continues to be done, right? Yeah, it's been done for so long. And it was beautiful.

And Neverland's such a complicated place. And that's what I love about writing when I write for intergenerational audiences, which this is for, is things that are complicated. It's not just cute and sweet and funny. It's difficult. You know, Peter Pan has issues. That boy has got some problems, you know? And so it's not just all fun and games. And yet there also is fun and games and incredible magic and flying and all of those things and fairies and pirates. And, you know, so I was like, I really want to be a part of this. And I want to, I do want to fix it because I think it's worth fixing. And so I took the job and it's been, gosh, almost not quite two years now since I think it's worth fixing. And so I took the job, and it's been, gosh, almost not quite two years now since I took it. Larissa, before theater, you were in film and television as a creative executive and then as a film producer. I'm very curious about the creative

executive title, but what made you leave that genre? Yeah. Yeah, the creative executive title is actually my way of going to film school and becoming a writer. You know, I was married to an artist, and I was a classical ballet dancer in my first career. And honestly, I just didn't have the time or the money to go back to school. And so I worked my way up through the business to become a creative executive because those are the people. They're basically editors in the film and TV world. They're the people that find writers, work with writers, work on the scripts, give the notes, et cetera. And that's how I learned to be a writer was through that. How did that role help you?

I'm just thinking about because you're so savvy in your ability to navigate systems. How did it help you in navigating different worlds, especially the worlds you move in now? Oh, my goodness. You know, that time in Hollywood was invaluable. I think, you know, one of the best things that I got from it was an economy of words and a pace of realism. TV, you know, is literally, you know, time is money. You know, advertisers are down to the, you know, seconds of time. And so each word you use has to be so carefully decided

on because you don't have seconds to waste because you're going to have to sell this many seconds to be able to afford this stuff. I think the other thing that I really got from that education as a film and TV developer and then writer later was a lack of preciousness. I'm very clear, you know, film and TV, you're constantly throwing out thousands of pages. I mean, you need to do a TV show. The pages are just gone. Whole episodes disappear and are rewritten and change and start over. And there's a speed in that work that I got that has served me incredibly well as a playwright. You know, when I was in the room with Lonnie Price working on Peter Pan these last few weeks, he was saying, wow, if you ever decide to become a full-time musical book writer, you will work all the time. Because I can rewrite 30 pages in a couple hours. That's easy because TV works at that speed.

And so that's really helped me a lot in my playwriting career. Larissa Fast Horse, congratulations on the success of your plays and your art. And thank you so much for this conversation. I really appreciate you speaking with me. It's always a joy to talk with you, and I appreciate you letting me talk about all the fun things we're doing. Larissa Fast Horse wrote the Thanksgiving play,

which ran on Broadway earlier this year, making her the first known Native American playwright to produce a Broadway production. This winter, she'll be part of a refreshed take on the musical Peter Pan, which has its nationwide premiere in December. Fresh Air Weekend was produced this week by Heidi Saman. Our Fresh Air executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Thank you.