MacArthur fellow Larissa FastHorse spotlights the hypocrisies of woke America in "The Thanksgiving Play."
It opened Saturday at New Village Arts in Carlsbad.
In it, four very well-intentioned theatre people set out to create an elementary school Thanksgiving pageant that won’t ruffle any feathers.
"And things go bad," said director Daniel Jáquez.
The play pokes fun at, and holes in, the earnest attempts of white people to be politically correct following the murder of George Floyd.
"Before, we were blind to race. And now, we totally see it!" declares a white character.
Jáquez said the whole premise is a bit meta.
FastHorse wrote the play for white actors knowing it would be easier to get produced.
"I was told as a Native American playwright again and again that my plays that had primarily Native American actors were 'uncastable,'" she told NPR.
"Nobody wanted to produce her plays because they didn't think there was an indigenous actor community or theatre community out there, where we know that there's a lot," Jáquez said.
Perhaps proving FastHorse’s theory, it became the first work by a Native American playwright on Broadway. Now, the first at Carlsbad’s New Village Arts. And one of the top 10 most-produced plays in the United States.
The absurdity of a Thanksgiving play without any Native American actors is a plotline in the play itself.
"I just checked your Native American Heritage month grant, and it doesn’t explicitly say that you have to use it for a Native American person!" one of the characters reassures another.
"Really?" she said.
"As long as we do something that honors Native Americans for November, you’re good to keep the money. Problem solved!" he said.
The play is funny, and full of second-hand cringe.
And, Jáquez hopes, some first-hand cringe too.
"We question our whiteness and question who wrote our history and what our traditions come from," he said.
