The Thanksgiving Play. It’s Not What You Think. It’s Way Better.
The Thanksgiving Play
November 21 – December 15, 2024
Forgive me for being wary when I read the flyer for The Thanksgiving Play, written by Larissa Fasthorse and directed by Tara Moses, Seminole Nation of Oklahoma/Mvskoke. I pictured an audience of affluent white folks being brow-beaten by the sins of our forefathers.
The first ten minutes reinforced my fears. Uber correct elementary school drama teacher Logan (Jasmine Rochelle Goodspeed) and her wannabe equally woke boyfriend Jaxton (Johnny Gordon) trade politically correct drivel in a perfectly rendered public school classroom as they prepare to create a Thanksgiving play for their students. Among Logan’s listicle of development grants is one to celebrate Native American Month. She’s actually hired a Native American to star in the show! Geeky history teacher/theater nut Caden joins the process. Just when the overwrought language of inclusion wears so thin as to become humorous, Alicia (Marisa Diamond) arrives—fabulously late. The featured actress is no one’s conception of a Native American. Turns out she’s just a garden variety Disney Princess who sports seven different head shot identities to increase her chances of getting a gig. You want Jasmine? Mulan? Pocahontas? Alicia will deliver.
Between classroom scenes, the actors realign to deliver direct snippets from actual teacher training manuals, You Tube videos, and media reports that illuminate how corrosive depiction of Native Americans continue in our society to this day.
The four white characters, charged with creating a culturally appropriate Thanksgiving play, tangle and twist and contort themselves so far from original purpose they wind up realizing, “Whatever, it’s theatre. We don’t need actual Native Americans to tell a Native American story.” The play moves from the intractable problems of playing redface to a joyful acceptance of whiteface with so much hilarity, by the time The Thanksgiving Play descends into farce, and gallons of white paint cover everyone, playwright Larissa Fasthorse’s point is well made: all this circular angst is not getting us anywhere near the roots of the structural inequities of our world.
The play ends on an ambiguous note that I will not spoiler alert. Except to say, that while it feels vacuous in the stage moment, it resonates true long afterward.
Cast of The Thanksgiving Play. Photo by Smugmug.My habit is to read the program, and other media, after I’ve seen a play. I like the fewest possible preconceptions. Director Moses noted that the script reads, “BIPOC that can pass as white should be considered.” I find that a telling note in an era when progressive culture has straight-jacketed actors into identity silos where, for sure, white actors cannot play anything else but. The program goes on to proclaim that all four actors are Native American. After seeing so many white guys play Injuns for so much of my life, this seems fine, even refreshing. But I wondered whether the program writers observed the same play I just did—where the entire idea of slicing humans into so many discrete, disconnected identities yields us exactly: nothing.
