A handful of scenes from the visually breathtaking and poignant feature film ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ lure the viewer into the vast Midwestern expanse known as the Black Hills: horseback riders galloping in a circle in slow motion on top of a grassy plain, a berry pink, almost crimson, withering sun, and a 1953 Technicolor clip of a white couple expressing their longing for the geographic region.
In Second Stage Theater’s Broadway production of THE THANKSGIVING PLAY written by Larissa FastHorse of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, directed by Tony Award Winning Director Rachel Chavkin, this play uses humor and absurdity to address our society’s inability to recorrect it’s happy “peaceful dinner” narrative to the brutal reality of how Indigenous communities that have been massacred, brutalized, and erased from American narratives and especially their own land. With a star filled cast including D’arcy Carden (TV’s The Good Place and A League of their Own), Award Winner Katie Finneran (Noises Off, Promises Promises), Scott Foley, and Chris Sullivan play teachers and actors in real time trying to figure out how a cast of all white people can effectively honor the voices of Indigenous people and their history. With a script that reflects the many conversations and efforts of out “artistically inspired allies” that is highly aware of its time and place living after the BLM movement, FastHorse tactfully writes a story centering white bodies and their allyship (even if it’s performative) to highlight the American discomfort that comes with the truth of Native American History.
Larissa FastHorse, of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, along with being the first Indigenous Woman produced on Broadway, is an award winning writer/choreographer, a 2020 MacArthur Fellow, and a co-founder of Indigenous Direction. Before opening weekend, Larissa took a morning to sit down with the Knockturnal over Zoom to discuss her Broadway production of THE THANKSGIVING PLAY with Second Stage Theater. A playwright who began her career She discusses her collaboration with Tony Award Winning Director Rachel Chavkin, the cast and creative team of THE THANKSGIVING PLAY, and her hopes and feelings on Indigenous representation.
In the midst of a dire immigration policy debate and an emerging voice for female empowerment, British filmmaker Susanna White’s upcoming Western drama, ‘Woman Walks Ahead,’ could not have emerged at a more appropriate time.