Larissa FastHorse

Biography

Larissa FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is a playwright, choreographer, and co-founder of Indigenous Direction, the nation’s leading consulting company for Indigenous arts and audiences. The Thanksgiving Play (Playwrights Horizons/Geffen Playhouse) was one of America’s top ten produced plays for the 2020 season. She is the first Native American playwright in the history of American theater to make that list. 

Larissa FastHorses’s additional titles of note include What Would Crazy Horse Do? (KCRep), Landless (AlterTheater), Cow Pie Bingo (AlterTheater), Average Family (Children’s Theater Company of Minneapolis), and Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: A Class Presentation (Native Voices at the Autry). Larissa FastHorse has also created a nationally recognized trilogy of community engaged plays, including Urban Rez (Cornerstone Theater Company), Native Nation (ASU Gammage), and The L/D/Nakota Project (Cornerstone Theater Company).

Larissa FastHorse is the recipient of numerous prestigious fellowships and awards, including the 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the NEA Distinguished New Play Development Grant, the PEN/Laura Pels Theatre Award for an American Playwright, the Joe Dowling Annamaghkerrig Fellowship, and the UCLA Native American Program Woman of the Year, among others.

Larissa FastHorse began her career as a ballet dancer. She started writing in the film and television industry, where she was a Sundance Native Feature Fellow, Fox Diversity Fellow, and an ABC Native American Fellow. She is currently returning to the world of film and television, working on a film for Disney Channel, a special for NBC, and a series at Freeform.

Career Highlight

Larissa FastHorse was chosen as a 2020 MacArthur Fellow, receiving the prestigious “genius grant.” She was chosen due to her work in “creating space for indigenous artists, stories, and experiences in mainstream theater and countering misrepresentation of Native American perspectives in broader society.”

The Thanksgiving Play

  • Genre: Comedy
  • Breakdown:
    • 1 W, Caucasian 
    • 1 W, Caucasian looking, “but would have been cast as ethnic in 1950s movies”
    • 2 M, Caucasian
  • Synopsis:
    • The Thanksgiving Play follows Logan, an Anglo high school drama teacher, who is tasked with putting on a school play to celebrate Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage month. To workshop the play, Logan recruits Jaxton, an actor and her politically correct partner, Caden, a history teacher, and Alicia, an actress who marketed herself as Native American, but is not actually Native American. In an attempt not to appropriate the Native American culture, Logan and her collaborators make a series of missteps, and the three woke thespians ultimately fail to create anything at all.
  • Development/Production History:
    • Commissioned and originally produced by the Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, OR in April 2018
    • Produced by Playwrights Horizons in New York, NY on October 12, 2018
  • Photos from production:
The Thanksgiving Play, Playwrights Horizons, 2018.
Photo by Joan Marcus.
The Thanksgiving Play, Playwrights Horizons, 2018.
Photo by Joan Marcus.
The Thanksgiving Play, Playwrights Horizons, 2018.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

Average Family

  • Genre: Theatre for Young Audiences
  • Breakdown:
    • 1M, Native American
    • 1W, Native American
    • 2M children, Native American
    • 1W child, Native American
    • 2M, Caucasian
    • 2M teens, Caucasian
    • 1W child, Caucasian
  • Synopsis:
    • Nathan Roubidoux, a Native American father, signs his family up for a local game show, thinking that it would be a good opportunity to unite his fractured family. The game show pits the Roubidoux family against the Monroe family in a frontier-like prairie with limited supplies. As the families compete for the grand prize of an RV, the Roubidoux family reconnects with their Native American culture and each other.
  • Development/Production History:
    • Commissioned and originally produced by Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis (2007), Peter Brosius directing, Ford New Works Project, published with Plays for Young Audiences
  • Photos from production:
Average Family, Children’s Theatre Company, 2007.
Photo by Rob Levine.
Average Family, Children’s Theatre Company, 2007.
Photo by Rob Levine.
Average Family, Children’s Theatre Company, 2007.
Photo by Rob Levine.
Average Family, Children’s Theatre Company, 2007.
Photo by Rob Levine.
Average Family, Children’s Theatre Company, 2007.
Photo by Rob Levine.
  • Plays
    • Average Family – 2007
    • Serra Springs – 2008
    • Teaching Disco Squaredancing to our Elders: A Class Presentation – 2008
    • Different Does Not Mean the Same – 2009
    • Untitled Ballet Play – 2010
    • A Dancing People– 2011
    • Hunka – 2012
    • Cherokee Family Reunion – 2012
    • The Thanksgiving Play – 2015
    • Allies – My America Too – 2015
    • Landless – 2015
    • Urban Rez – 2016
    • Cow Pie Bingo – 2018
    • Native Nation – 2019

Reflection on Contribution to Anti-Racist Theatre

Larissa FastHorse contributes to Anti-Racist Theater by providing a voice to Native American people and allowing them to have more agency over the way they are represented. Each of her plays intentionally shatters stereotypes regarding the Native American culture and pushes the audience to consider their own biases. The Thanksgiving Play highlights the dangers of performative wokeness, and the condensation and racism that result from it. With an all Anglo cast, FastHorse is able to force Anglo audiences to see themselves in the characters and evaluate where they can improve in their own lives to become more inclusive. In Average Family, FastHorse uses the narrative device of a reality TV show to force Native Americans to live inside an Anglo person’s stereotype regarding the Native American culture. The family is therefore able to shatter stereotypes from the inside out. It is also important to note that Average Family is meant for young audiences and has been performed for children across the country. The Thanksgiving Play heavily criticizes the US education system for instilling biases in students at young ages. Thus, Larissa FastHorse engages in important work to illuminate the way our children are taught racist ideas and the need to educate children on the Native American culture.

Compiled by Katie Mullane, Film, Television, & Theatre and Economics, Class of 2021