(Above: Photo courtesy of Oregon Contemporary Theatre)
By Randi Bjornstad
It’s quite a new play, but Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play has generated some favorable comments since it had its world premiere just about a year ago.
Jesse Green of The New York Times offered this compliment: “The familiar, whitewashed story of Pilgrims and Native Americans chowing down together gets a delicious roasting from expert farceurs.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s writer Frank Scheck described it as “Very, very funny,” a play that “skewers liberal pretensions with glee — this clever satire is something for which to be truly thankful.”
The premise of the play is that a bunch of “teaching artists”get together to create a new kind of Thanksgiving pageant that combines both Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Month. The result, by apparent consensus, brings up pronouncements of “wickedly funny,” “hilariously satirical,” and “pitch perfect comedy.”
FastHorse’s creation had its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in New York City just over a year ago, and it apparently was the first time that theater group had produced a play by an indigenous author.
Craig Willis, Oregon Contemporary Theatre’s artistic director, describes FastHorse as “an equal opportunity satirist.”
“No sacred cows are spared” in her treatment of the mythologized view that white America has of Thanksgiving, he said, “but she enables us to laugh at ourselves while encouraging thoughtful reflection” about attitudes and missteps as good intentions and historical misapprehensions collide.
The cast includes only four characters, played in the Oregon Contemporary Theatre production by Kelly Oristano and Kari Welch — both veterans of OCT shows — and two actors, Jennifer Appleby Chu and Scott Frazier-Maskiell, who are making their first appearances with OCT.
Kirk Boyd directs the play, with scenic design by Steen V. Mitchell, costumes by Erin Wills, lighting by Michael A. Peterson, and movement coordination by William M. Hurlings. Becca Blanchard is properties master, and Christie O’Neill is production stage manager.
FastHorse may not be familiar as a playwright to many theatergoers, but she has a significant résumé of scripts, many of which come from her Native American background, including Cow Pie Bingo, Urban Rez, Native Nation, and Average Family, as well as Teaching Disco Squaredancing to our Elders: A Class Presentation, and Cherokee Family Reunion. She has been recipient of many awards and fellowships.
FastHorse is an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of the Sicangu Lakota Nation.
The Thanksgiving Play
When: Evenings at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 8-9, 14-16, and 21-23; matinees at 2 p.m. on Nov. 17 and 24
Where: Oregon Contemporary Theatre, 194 W. Broadway, Eugene
Tickets: $20 to $42, $15 for students with valid ID (All tickets on opening night, Nov. 8, are $40 and include a post-show dessert and cast reception.); available at the ticket office, 541-465-1506, or online at octheatre.org
