The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Playwright Larissa FastHorse on “The Thanksgiving Play,” Broadway’s New Comedy of White Wokeness

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

“The Thanksgiving Play” is a play about the making of a play. Four performers struggle to devise a Thanksgiving performance that’s respectful of Native peoples, historically accurate (while not too grim for white audiences), and also inclusive to the actors themselves. A train wreck ensues. “First it’s fun. . . . You get to have a good time in the theatre. I would say that’s the sugar, and then there’s the medicine,” the playwright Larissa FastHorse tells the staff writer Vinson Cunningham. “The satire is the medicine, and you have to keep taking it.” FastHorse was born into the Sicangu Lakota Nation, and was adopted as a child into a white family. She is the first Native American woman to have a play produced on Broadway. “When I was younger, it was very painful to be separated from a lot of things that I felt like I couldn’t partake in because I wasn’t raised on the reservation or had been away from my Lakota family so long,” she says. “But now I really recognize it as my superpower that I can take Lakota culture . . . and contemporary Indigenous experiences and translate them for white audiences, which unfortunately are still the majority of audiences in American theatre.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. If you want to see some of the more extreme examples of liberally minded people bending themselves into pretzels to show that they're woke, you could tune into Fox News, which has a particular dedication to that theme. Or if you want a more comedic version of it, you could see the Thanksgiving play, which opens on Broadway this week and has already been produced around. the country. It's a play about the making of a play. The four performers struggle to devise a Thanksgiving play that is somehow respectful of Native peoples and historically accurate,

but they also don't want to make the audience feel terrible about American history. And they want to make the performers themselves feel included in the process of writing it. If that sounds like a train wreck, well, that's what happens. The playwright is Larissa Fast Horse, and she belongs to the Sikungu Lakota Nation, and she's the first Native American woman with a play produced on Broadway. I wanted to talk to Larissa not only because of the humor

and the sharp wit and the sort of structural tightness that you find in her work, but also because she has become, just by dint of her identity, kind of a foremost voice about Native presence in the arts and how our artistic culture

feeds into and is a consequence of the larger culture in a way that almost no one else working in America is today. That's the New Yorker's Vincent Cunningham. He spoke the other day with Larissa Fast Horse. I grew up in South Dakota, where my Lakota people are from, but I was adopted at a young age and open adoption to a white family who had worked on the reservation for a long time,

the reservation I'm from. I was always raised very aware of my Lakota identity and my Lakota culture, and they brought a lot of mentors into my life and elders to help me stay connected in that way. But at the same time, I was growing up in a very white culture. And my first career was in classical ballet, so it doesn't really get much whiter than that. I don't know, maybe opera, I'm not sure.

There's a list, but ballet is on the top of the top of it. They're way up there, yeah, they're always in the top five. So, you know, at the time, when I was younger, it was very painful, right, to be separated from, a lot of things I felt like I couldn't partake in because I wasn't raised on the reservation or I'd been away from my Lakota family so long. And that was very hard, but now, you know, I really recognize it as my superpower that I can take Lakota culture and experiences and contemporary indigenous experiences and translate them into white for white audiences, which unfortunately are the

majority of audiences still in American theater. Yeah. I do want to go back to this thing about ballet because it does seem like this really important part of your life that you're a professional ballet dancer. And how much did your training as a dancer, how much does that sort of stay with you? Is that a part of your approach as a writer? Does it, do you think about that often when you're working? Oh, yes, my ballet background is hugely influential in my work as a playwright. first off, just in the work ethic, ballet dancers are expected to be shown something once and then you work on it on your own and you come back

and you've got it down. People aren't going to sit there and spend a lot of time. Spoon-feeding things or teaching you one thing at any time. You're expected to learn it. You're expected to do your own training at night after six hours of classes and rehearsal. You're expected to do a lot on your own and that kind of work ethic certainly has helped me

as a playwright where you spend, you know, sometimes alone in your home writing, and you could miss that deadline. No one's going to yell at you. But also, you can really see it in my writing. There's a lot of movement-based acting, I guess, you know, text-free scenes in my work. The Thanksgiving play is a perfect example.

There's several scenes that have little-to-no text that are movement-based, and they are moving the story forward and they're essential to the story, but without using text or very little text and a lot of movement and gesture. And then I'd say finally also, you know, as far as my process,

I was trained primarily in the George Balanchine tradition, and his way of working with dancers and his choreography was to change it all the time, depending on who he is working with. So when I'm in the room with actors, like I have been here in New York for the past couple months, I'm constantly adapting my work to that group of people. So it highlights their strengths.

and is perfect for them. So my work is always changing when I'm in the room. So the Thanksgiving play. It's about four people who, let's say, present as white, trying to put on a play about the first Thanksgiving and sort of trying and, I think, often failing to acknowledge this native presence that they are somehow trying to highlight.

And I was thinking a lot about, let's say, what's happening in Florida, about how we educate our children about topics that might make them feel. feel, whatever, guilty or upset. How much of today's dramas over education and race and history were you thinking about with this new production? Oh, a lot.

Yeah, I definitely have updated a lot for the times. It's interesting. You mentioned Florida. The laws state if something causes, I think it's guilt, discomfort, or anguish based on your race. It can't be taught in a school. And you will hear, well, you'll see those words in the play if you come to it.

I wanted to make sure that these people, because they are, I call performative wokeness. You know, these are white folks, liberal folks trying really hard to do everything right. And as you said, getting everything wrong. And I wanted to make sure that they're people of today and not someone who can look at, you know, I don't want people to be able to say, oh, well, since 2020, we've changed. So this isn't me because it definitely still is. Right. But interestingly, one of my first writing mentors was the great Maritamita,

who is a Maori writer and filmmaker from New Zealand. et terra, and she said to me at my very first screenplay that I wrote before I was writing plays, she said, Larissa, you can be an artist or you can be an educator. If you try to be both, you'll do one of them badly. So you have to pick one. And I chose artist. And she said, there's certainly art that educates, and there's education that's artistic. But you have to choose which one you are and stay true to that.

I mean, I imagine that that tension is, exacerbated by the expectations of the audience, right? I mean, just the way the arts happen in America, usually the audiences are white. Right. And they often, I think, I think it's fair to say some people come to the theater on some level hoping to have some sort of educational experience, as opposed to art. So it's like, what I love about your play is that it's like, no, you're just going to laugh

and it's going to feel weird. And is that something that you like to play with or is it something that feels like a hurdle? No, absolutely. I love that. Playwright Larissa Fast Horse talking with the New Yorker's Vincent Cunningham. More in a moment. One thing I love about this play, there's a character named Alicia, and she's played by Darcy Carden, a very funny, wonderful performer. And she's hired on the assumption that she is a native person. Right.

And I thought about this because a lot of the literature that I was raised on, black literature, passing is a big theme. What does passing mean to you, on stage and all? You know, I'm white passing in many ways, and yet at the same time, before I was writing when I was acting for a while, and the casting director said to me, we can tell you're not completely white,

and that's a problem. And I was like, wow. And I was like, okay, I'm done. There's nothing I can do about that. Is that America's subtitle? Is that perhaps the whole thing? Yes, that should be a little subtitle underneath. United States of America.

We can tell you, not white. It's a problem. Yeah, so it was, you know, but I am very light-skinned. And, again, it was something that was sometimes painful because colorism is a thing in our communities, and it was sometimes painful that I was so light in white passing growing up with a lot of, you know, full-blood. My father is full-blood, and they're much darker.

my biological father. And so I had some pain over that growing up, and especially because then I was raised away from it. It's like, who are you, you know, showing up again? However, then on the other side, on the white side, which is like American theater, I am quite sure that I get into rooms that not white-passing native people would not get into.

Yeah. It's funny. The other thing about Alicia is that she's brought in you know, specifically, and like, not just to be an actually presence, but it's like, we're going to use her expertise. And we're going to, like, what do you have to say? Please tell us, you know. The wisdom.

I would imagine that that has some corollary to your experience. Oh, it's exhausting. I always say, I just can't imagine what it would be like to just, like, for a white male playwright. Like, they just walk into a theater and they just to playwright and they don't do anything else. Like, I can't imagine what that's like. I've never done it.

Because, you know, I mean, I'm so fortunate with the career I've had. But I'm also the first one in 90% of the places I've worked. Like the first one in the theater, first one in, you know, it just goes on every step. I've got six shows this year. And it's like most of them I'm the first Native American, right? I guess this is, you know, the privilege of being the first means that I also have responsibility.

I do what I call Indian 101 that all of the staff has to come to, including front of house, box office, production, everybody to help them understand indigenous culture, the space they're standing in, and most importantly, our audiences that we're hoping to welcome into the theater and how do we welcome them and understanding that theater is a white culture. Western American theater is a white culture.

You know, the assumptions you're making of what's acceptable behavior in theater is completely different than what is normal behavior and so many cultures in this continent. One of the great things about the Thanksgiving play is that it spotlights so many things about theater that present to us as issues and actually say, well, do we really mean that?

And I think we've all settled into an orthodoxy, let's say, of like, you can't play outside of your race and ethnicity, whatever, your look. But of course, what that means is if there aren't indigenous roles to play, indigenous actors are never able to do that act of representation. In your experience, just working with actors and stuff, how have people started to think about that? So that's interesting because actually casting is still very complicated. Red face is being done regularly all over our country on film and TV, on stages.

There are so many non-Indigenous actors still playing indigenous roles. And there's so many people calling themselves indigenous that cannot in any way prove they're indigenous and have no actual connection to any indigenous community playing indigenous roles. People say they understand more and they're doing better and yet there they are. all red faces being done constantly. Conversely, fascinatingly, when I, if you read the script of the Thanksgiving play, I put in the character description that people of color who can pass for white

should be considered for roles. Right. And I was really proud of that. But when I get to New York, we were told we can't put that in the casting breakdown. Well, you can't ask people to play someone else. I was like, wait, there are still white people on these stages in New York City right now

playing Navy. This was a few years ago, playing native, but you're saying I can't openly have non, you know, white people play white people if they look white to you. You know, and they're like, no, you absolutely can't. I'm not allowed to ask people if they're Native American when they're being cast. And so we have to do this whole kind of song and dance of I kind of try to figure it out by chit-chat and seeing like, and then people get all mad because we cast it not. someone that turns out they weren't native or they didn't have a connection to community. And it's just, it's just constant, like, thing, which is all part of, you know, what we're dealing with in Thanksgiving play. Well, yeah, I mean, one way of interpreting the show is that it's about the sort of the most far-reaching implications of meaning well.

It seems to me that the people that are going to come to Broadway shows are like these same well-meaning people. I don't know. What has been the response to that? This is kind of you. What, you know, how do you feel about that? Oh, it's absolutely you. I mean, no, like, I do not hide that. You know, yeah, I don't hide the fact that this is about, you know, white liberal folks, which are, tend to be theater goers, not all.

I mean, I think the thing that I keep saying, but it's been very important to me in this play was that first it's fun and that you get to have a good time in the theater. And second, it's, I would say that's the sugar and then there's the medicine. Yeah. And so it's satire. It's a comedy within a satire. So the satire is the medicine, and you have to keep taking it through it. And, you know, honestly, some people opt out. We've had a couple, you know, a couple people walk out.

Really? And, like, once it got too far in, they're just like, no, this is too much. And I can imagine at least one scene where that might happen. Yeah. But, you know, the vast majority of audiences are really raucously responsive and really having a fun time. Last week we had audience members talking to the stage, like talking back, And, I mean, it just got wild.

They added, like, six, seven, eight minutes to the show. Whoa. Yeah, it was crazy. That's a lot of talking. It was a lot of talking from chatting and clapping and, you know, responding. And, like, we love that. Something that I've wondered because I think most people who live on Manhattan think about the Lenape only, usually before a show or something. And then someone comes out and does a land acknowledgement and say, this is the land of the Lenape people.

And they say, like, this thing. Like, does that practice, is that practice? How do you feel about that practice? Yeah. I mean, land acknowledgement, honestly, I know in some places we're getting a little tired of it. But I will say it's definitely, it's not everywhere, and it's not all facets of the society. So I'd say, you know, for me and tell everybody in the United States of America, if you can name the indigenous land they're standing on,

we need to keep doing it. Good. But, you know, I always say too, though, land acknowledgement is a step. So it's the first step of many steps toward reparation, right? Or the many steps of reparation. If you can't name who you're supposed to be paying reparation to, you obviously can't even begin.

So you have to at least know who reparations are owed to for the land that you're on. Who are you paying rent to? You know, you need to know that. And then you need to start paying the rent. Thank you so much for doing this. Of course, thank you. Thanks for having me.

It's so much fun. The New Yorker's Vincent Cunningham speaking with playwright Larissa Fast Horse. The Thanksgiving play is in previews for its Broadway run, and it opens next week. I'm David Remnick. That's our program for today. Thanks so much and see you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Marilyn.

Garbess of Tune Yards with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Walton, Breda Green, Adam Howard, Kalalia, Avery Keatley, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, and Gauphin in Putabuele, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Harrison Keithline, Michael May, David Gable, Amy Pearl, Meherbahtia, and Alejandra Deschet. And special thanks this week to Alex Barron. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the the Cherina Endowment Fund.