This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theater Podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the scenes with stars, creators, and industry leaders on Broadway and beyond.

[0:16] Gordon Cox: I'm Gordon Cox. On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to the writer Larissa FastHorse. With her comedy The Thanksgiving Play, now at Second Stage's Helen Hayes Theater, FastHorse becomes the first known Native American female playwright to see her work on Broadway. Wrestling with the history often erased in the stories we're all taught about Thanksgiving, and playfully skewering the well-meaning liberal artists struggling to acknowledge that history. The Thanksgiving Play is directed on Broadway by Rachel Chavkin, whose work includes Hadestown and Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, and has a starry cast led by Tony Winner Katie Finneran with Darcy Carden from The Good Place and A League of Their Own, Chris Sullivan from This Is Us, and Scott Foley from shows like Felicity and Scandal.

Now FastHorse is in the virtual studio with me to talk representation, comedy, and the change she's helping to bring about in the theater industry in Hollywood and in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Hi Larissa, thanks for joining me.

[1:10] Larissa FastHorse: Hi, thanks for having me.

[1:12] Gordon Cox: It's fun to talk to you.

[1:15] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah.

[1:15] Gordon Cox: And so The Thanksgiving Play has been one of the top ten most produced plays in the country, and that was facilitated in part by strategic choices you made as you were writing the play. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[1:35] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah. I am an American female playwright. I was writing for about a dozen years when I hit a wall, I will say, of having my plays commissioned and produced by the commissioning theater company that put money into it and development into it, and then the play would not go beyond that. And that was really frustrating and tiring and hard for me because it was not, you know, my plays weren't getting a longer life, which also is not financially very viable as a playwright. So I was getting super frustrated and I said, okay, fine American theater. I'm gonna continue to tell indigenous contemporary issues and stories, but I'm gonna do it with four white presenting people in one room. And if you say you can't produce that, then we obviously have a different conversation to have, and that's how I wrote The Thanksgiving Play.

I just say it's kind of my most depressing success, but I do love the fact that it was, in general, the roadblock that they were citing to further productions of your play the casting of native actors and the, you know, the talent pool. Like what was the pushback?

[2:44] Larissa FastHorse: Yes. Oh, so I didn't mean, yeah, the part I left out was that I was being told that my plays were uncastable because I had Native American characters in them, and I knew that wasn't true but I needed people to listen to me.

[2:56] Gordon Cox: Right.

[2:57] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, yeah. And did you feel limited by that choice? Was there something freeing in it? Like what was the, as you were grappling with it, how did you come to the idea of what the play, how the play would deal with the issues that you wanted to deal with?

[3:16] Larissa FastHorse: Initially, yes, it was complicated for me because I've only written with Native American characters in my plays, and I had to really, you know, think about it and wrestle with it for a while. But once I embraced it as a challenge for myself, I love a challenge and I will win a challenge. So I got really excited about it. And I love these characters. I love, they're from my life. You know, it was a great way to get to talk about things that I've experienced. I often say I'd say 80% of this dialogue is directly from life. It's, you know, I just had to string it together with my own things to make it into a story. And you know, to be honest too, though, in the end, now that The Thanksgiving Play has done so well, and here I am on Broadway, my next five plays this year, which I have six plays this year, are all with native characters. And that was something I wasn't able to achieve before I did this play. So I'm really grateful that that's how it worked out.

[4:14] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And for people who haven't seen the play yet, what's it about?

[4:19] Larissa FastHorse: Um, it's about four teaching artists and actors trying to devise a politically correct Thanksgiving play for Native American Heritage Month that does everything right, and they are trying so hard that they ultimately, spoiler alert, do everything wrong.

[4:41] Gordon Cox: Right, right. Tell me a little bit about how in what ways your experiences are reflected in that show because it's a lot of people trying very hard and often making a lot of mistakes that are, in this case, comic.

[4:58] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, yeah, I've said before, and it sounds like I'm just trying to be provocative, but I did a play before this called What Would Crazy Horse Do?

[5:08] Gordon Cox: Right.

[5:08] Larissa FastHorse: And in that play, it's dealing with a branch of the clan. But at the time, we should say.

[5:16] Gordon Cox: Yes, yeah, the Ku Klux Klan, yes, not a clan of relatives.

[5:20] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah. Um, yeah. So that play, I reached out to this particular branch of the clan that I was really terrified of, honestly, because they were very, they're a political lobbying group, they're registered lobbyists, you know, they're very organized, very seemed fairly harmless, you know, in the way they present themselves. But when you dig deeper, you realize it's based on white supremacy. So I reached out to Michael at New Member Services and I said, Hey, you know, I'm Native American, I'm writing this play, etc. And I want a character that, you know, is based on someone basically from your organization. And he was like, Great. Like we had a really nice, you know, email back and forth. Super racist, but like right there in front of me, like super clear.

You know, make clan jokes, and you know, I chose to only communicate by email with this person. Yeah, um, and you know, but like I knew exactly where they were coming from. Like Michael was 100% clear with who he was and what his feelings were and what his beliefs were. And so we actually had a pretty really useful back and forth for a year and a half, where I honestly deal with a lot of the very liberal, well-meaning folks, white folks that I deal with in American theater. They're so terrified of making a mistake or being wrong or offending or screwing up that it's like this constant moving target. I can't figure out who I'm talking to or what we're saying, or I don't know what we're getting to or not getting to.

I mean, there's so much apology and inaction, etc. that I just don't even know how to deal with that. And so, I mean, that really inspired what you see on stage and the constant back and forth and strangeness that's happening because that's what I encounter all the time, and it's really hard. It's easier, weirdly, to deal with Michael at the Klan; at least I know where he's coming from.

[7:13] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Why was it important to you that it be a comedy?

[7:16] Larissa FastHorse: Um, I'm primarily a comedy writer. That's what I do. All my six plays this year are comedies. Um, I think, you know, also it's based in Native American culture. You know, we're like family, tribal sovereignty, and comedy. Like those things are basis for pretty much any, I mean, I'm making massive generalizations, of course, but for any native people I've ever met on this continent, comedy and humor. We're living the world's longest dark comedy, and the only way we can survive it is to laugh or cry. And so we've chosen to laugh and to make fun of it. And native people have some of the broadest humor and some of the darkest humor you've ever heard. It can be very horrifying, as you may note in the play.

But um, it's also though, really um, it's fun. I mean, it's how we bond, it's how we test each other. Anytime you get like a couple natives together, within moments, they're gonna be laughing really loud. And so for me, it's just natural and it's also fun. Who wants to come to the theater and not have fun? Like I love being together with people and laughing. There's nothing better. I walked into the theater late the other day, and 600 people were laughing at once. And that to me is the most incredible sound and experience that we can possibly have in theater. I love it.

[8:33] Gordon Cox: You first wrote this play several years ago. We saw it in New York in 2018. Had anything over the course of the life of the play, had things changed in sort of the broader culture or politically that affected how the play landed with audiences, or how you wanted to approach things in the play, you know, with influence rewrites and things?

[8:55] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, we did a lot of rewriting for this production. Rachel Chavkin and I have known each other for 10 years. And although this is the first production we've done together, we've developed other things together. We work very collaboratively. And then I have these four incredible actors, Katie Finneran, Scott Foley, Darcy Carden, and Chris Sullivan, who are comedy geniuses. I think a lot of people, we always say Scott's like the sleeper genius; like people don't realize he's unbelievably funny. Um, because he just hasn't, I don't know, been given the opportunity to do a lot of comedy. He's done some, but not a lot of comedy.

[9:25] Gordon Cox: Yeah, we haven't seen him in a lot of comedy, you're right.

[9:28] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah. No, but he's hilarious. Um, we always say he's like the comedy assassin. He likes slides and just like kills you with this joke. Um, anyway, but I had these incredible funny humans. So it was a combination of just the collaborative space Rachel and I created with these people who are so smart and funny, and the changes in what has happened in the last few years and what we've all been through for the past few years in this country. And so I took, you know, those things together informed the changes we've made to the script, which are fairly substantial. Um, we also, the really big change that in this production is having children do the interstitial scenes. So we had two dozen children in a film shoot that we did a month before we started rehearsal, where we have children representing the things that are about children.

[10:18] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And tell us a little bit about that element. Why was that important to you? What does it contribute to the production?

[10:25] Larissa FastHorse: You know, I've always wanted to do the production with children. That was a dream that I had and I shared with Carol Rothman here at Second Stage, and she was really excited about that dream. The reality, unfortunately, with COVID continuing, was that we could not work with children in this space. It's just, I mean, I guess we could, but it would have taken like triple the budget and we don't have the space and, you know, all that. Um, and so it just wasn't feasible at this time. So we brought on Rachel shortly around that time and she's like, Well, let's do film, let's shoot films. And you know, Rachel has been moving into doing more film work. And so she directed these film shoots. And I think, you know, what I've heard from audience members that come to this production that makes me happy because it was what we're hoping for, was that it just brings a different relevance, you know, it brings a resonance to it when we remember that this is ultimately about the children and what are we teaching them and what are we making them do in the name of tradition and, you know, whatever, making us feel good, you know, like when it's actually we're having them repeat lives.

[11:31] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit for the people who haven't seen it yet about the content of those videos and, you know, where you draw the material from?

[11:39] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, every other scene in the play is what we call interstitial scenes and they are, well in this case they're actual reenactments of material that I found online when I was researching this play.

[11:53] Larissa FastHorse: Uh they're so they're all within the last what, seven, eight years, six, seven, eight, I can't do math. Anyway, they're very recent within less than ten years. Um they are songs, pageants, uh teachers' comments, public comments, uh curriculum, things that I found on teachers' websites, on YouTube channels, on chat rooms about how to celebrate Thanksgiving with your students. And most of them are are horrifying and um one or two are not as horrifying, but we've turned the way we use them in this production, um, we've turned them to say, look, you know, the children are trying to do something earnest and then it turns bad through the way the adults react to it. Right. And so I I took those and put them on stage directly. My publisher made me change the names of all the websites and things to protect us from having sued. But they come to they come directly from current uh websites online.

[12:50] Gordon Cox: And as the Thanksgiving play continues to get done around the country, would those videos be available? Do you envision them being available for you know licensing for other productions to use?

[13:04] Larissa FastHorse: I would assume there is a path to that. I don't know much about licensing. I have a fantastic publisher in Concord who deals with all that. But I would assume there is a way to do that for sure.

[13:15] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah. And I can only imagine that uh rehearsals for this play can mirror some of the conversations that happen in the play itself. Is that is that part of the fun for uh and the and tell me about that experience, sort of watching uh I I I I can only imagine that you kind of watch uh some of the things that your play is satirizing happening in the room.

[13:40] Larissa FastHorse: Oh yes, I will say, you know, I mean, you know, I have four fantastic humans in the show that care deeply about everything. I mean, they're just very caring humans. Um, they it means a lot to them to be a part of making history with the first you know known Native American female playwright on Broadway. That means a great deal to them. They take that very seriously, being a part of that and supporting me and my voice in all of that, um, with their substantial um followings and and history as performers. So I'm I'm very fortunate of all that, and they're very funny, and they're and we I've never laughed so hard at my own play. But yeah, that being said, with their care is there's a lot of fear, actually, you know.

Um, Scott Foley, who has this long, long career, you know, he's such a caring, fantastic human, and he's playing Jackson, who is really the punching bag of the show. I mean, we constantly are laughing at his expense. Um, and he takes that responsibility of being that character so seriously that it gets a little, it can be hard for him, you know, because people forget who he is, you know. He does it so well that people start to get annoyed at him or frustrated with him, or audience members have like yelled at him. I mean, it's just wild. They get really into it, and you know, he's still a this fantastic caring human. And so that happened, you know, that happens in performance, but also in the rooms, and there's a lot of discussions about you know their feelings and their fears and their concerns to do it right for me and to represent um my vision and Rachel's vision and and and the things that we're trying to say in this play and making sure they get it right.

And so yeah, there were some talks that sometimes it I will say ended in tears. Um people just because they care, but because they care so much, you know, and they really wanted to do it right. Um, and a couple times we did have actors be say, all right, I know I'm being one of my I'm being being my own character right now, but I have to ask this, or I have to say this, or we have, you know, like and and we we created though a safe space where everyone could do that because ultimately they're the people up on that stage and they're the ones that um you know I'll be gone after opening, and they're still there. So we wanted to make sure they had the time and the space to express those things and and work their way through it.

[15:54] Gordon Cox: I'll have more with Larissa right after the break.

[16:06] Gordon Cox: And now here's more with the writer Larissa FastHorse. Larissa, you found kind of a roundabout route into the theater, it seems like you didn't start out as a writer. Tell us a little bit about uh your journey as as an artist.

[16:20] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, I was not a theater kid at all, which is um it's which is kind of funny when you see the play because it's such a there's a lot of inside theater jokes and things in the play. Um I had a lot of help writing some of them. My longtime collaborator, Michael John Garces, gave me a lot of the theater references because I didn't know them. I didn't know I didn't have a depth of theater knowledge because I it's just not what I grew up in. I grew up as a um wanting to be a ballet dancer, a classical ballet dancer, and that was my first career. So my world, you know, you want to talk about balance sheet ballets, or you want to talk about Tchaikovsky or Pedapar, you know, a lot of things that I can talk about forever.

But um, you know, talking of Stravinsky, you know, but talking about um theater was not something I I have a lot of depth in. Um when I retired, you know, like many dancers uh at 30. Um, I was fortunate I made it to 30. That's like a long career for a dancer.

[17:13] Gordon Cox: Yeah, I was gonna say that's pretty old, right?

[17:16] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, it is. Yeah, I you're like super you're the old people in the room. Um, and so when I retired, I was had to find something else. And um Career Transitions for Dancers, which is a fantastic program that's now under the actors fund, gave me career counseling to help me find my next work. And um, first I worked at film and television because I lived in Los Angeles where my husband is from. Uh got very frustrated very quickly. It was a very different field 15 years ago for a native artists, especially one by themselves without representation. Um, I sold a couple TV shows right off the bat, and it didn't the development process was miserable and did not go well. Um the representative the watering down of indigenous um identity and culture and casting was really frustrating and I felt like I was fighting every day.

And um, when my two shows didn't make it on the air, I was relieved and I was like, wow, that's bad. I don't want to be relieved when I fail. Um but you know, that was 15 years ago. Um so I found theater I was commissioned into my first play from there. I had a a play going through the Sundance Native Film Program, and uh children's theater company in Minneapolis found me through that program and commissioned my first play. And I've said many times, I'll say it again. I walked in the studio and I was like, oh, it's dancers with furniture. I can do this. Like I know what this is, I know this world, you know. Um I've been really lucky though, that's you know, in the last six months before COVID, I returned to film and TV for the first time, and I've had a lot of film and TV projects set up since then, and it's completely different for me now. You know, I'm working with all the major studios, but I have agency, I have a team, you know, it's and Hollywood's different. Hollywood's doing things differently, which is exciting.

[18:55] Gordon Cox: Oh, yeah, I was just gonna ask if it was because of you know the rise in your own profile with the success of your work in the theater, or if it was because things had changed in Hollywood.

[19:04] Larissa FastHorse: It's probably a little of both. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's definitely both. I mean, yeah, I I say no to way more things than I say yes to. Um, and then I also though, yeah, Hollywood is doing things better, and there's a lot of fantastic native-run organizations in Hollywood now that are really, you know, holding their feet to the fire to like do things right, and and also though, giving them the resources to find people to help you do things right. Right. Um, it's not always been successful. We still have shows that are casting non-native people in native roles. We still have those things happening, but it's infinitely better and not nearly as depressing and hard as it was 15 years ago to be a native writer in Hollywood.

[19:42] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Yeah. And as you were starting out writing plays, who were the artists and who what were the works that uh really inspired you and that uh sort of uh helped you kind of figure out, you know, what it is to write a play.

[19:56] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, you know, my my first um long-term theater mentor was actually a designer, um, Skip Mercier, who unfortunately passed away um two years ago now. He is a set and costume designer, very well known Tony nominated designer. He was the set and costume designer of my first play, the one that I did children's theater company, and he became my mentor, and it was really beautiful because it worked well for me because he sees plays. Um, he was at the O'Neill for many years, um, and he sees plays obviously as space, right? As how things happen in space with you know, the sets and the clothes and things. And so, as a dancer, coming from a dancer background, that translated really well to me because I saw things as space and and how things move in space.

Um, when I see my plays, when I start writing, you know, I they're just movies I'm seeing basically on a stage that I just have to type really fast and catch up with them. And so he was my original um mentor that helped me form how I look at my work and how I develop my work. He would always, when I was having trouble with the script, he'd always solve it with a visual thing. You know, I had one script that had four characters, and I was having a rough time figuring it out. And he said, Okay, Larissa, it's a it's a square with people all the way around. There's three chairs. Every scene is about who gets a chair and who doesn't. And it's like, got it, you know, and it just solved everything.

And I was able to fix that play, and it was became a fairly popular play. Um, and so that was really helpful because that it also helped me take my dance background and translate it into theater. So you see that in plays, especially the Thanksgiving play. It's very clear. There's whole long scenes that are without words or very few words that depend entirely on action that I write into the script. You know, I write the story and the arc of it into the script, and then within that, the different performers, you know, um execute those scenes in different ways. But they're very much dance-related and space related.

[21:56] Larissa FastHorse: Uh, you are also the one of the founders of an organization called Indigenous Direction. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what it does?

[22:04] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, so Ty and I founded that company about five years ago now. Um, Indigenous Direction is a consulting company that consults with organizations that want to engage with indigenous art artists or audiences, and or all three together. And um, we work with different primarily it's been theater companies. Um, you have a very long-term relationship, for instance, with the Guthrie Theater Company, where we started originally just as consultants to talk about their systems and programs that moved into a long community engagement, which was made longer because of COVID, community engagement period that we um worked with them to engage directly in communities, making artistic works. And now that has now moved on to the third phase where we have moved that community engagement work into full production.

And we have our first Ty and I were co-commissioned to write a new play that's being produced this year, but it came directly out of the community engagement. We'll be using actors that we worked with through that pro that have been with us since the beginning of the process, using stories and the ideas that came out of the community um that will be now on the main stage, which is pretty exciting. Um we also work with uh we've been working quite a while three years now with Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. I'm unfortunately now the Thanksgiving Indian which I said all things Thanksgiving. Uh about October my phone starts blowing up and talk about Thanksgiving. Like how does she talk to the actual Thanksgiving Indians? But um so we've brought we've been you know slowly influencing the parade and that Macy's has been an incredible partner.

[23:30] Larissa FastHorse: A lot of people haven't noticed that for a few years now Tom Turkey used to open the parade as a pilgrim turkey with little pilgrim children. He no longer has pilgrim children and he's now a show turkey. He's wearing a top hat and a little bow tie and as a gold star and he's going to a show, you know, like it because he's in New York. Um, that's what Turkey does in New York. Um, so you know, things like that have changed. We have Mompanog people in the parade, you know, all these things so that's kind of work we do a lot of different things like that.

[23:58] Larissa FastHorse: Um, you are a winner of the MacArthur Genius grant. How has that uh influenced, how has that impacted your work and how and the opportunities that you get? Yeah, that's huge. I mean, MacArthur is definitely a life-changing um program. Uh, it was weird because I got it the first year of the pandemic. Yeah. So, um, you know, I talk, you know, a lot of people, former winners, you know, that I know call you right away and they're all like, oh just wait, everything's gonna change. I was like, yeah, no, pretty much the same in my living room. My husband and I are still sitting here going, yay, you know, still can't go outside. So here we are. So nothing changed really in the first year or so as far as you know, outwardly.

What did change hugely is um, unfortunately my father got COVID at the end of the first year before vaccines and um, he had long COVID and just passed away after two years. And um, what it changed was that thank you. Um, but it meant that I could care for my parents. Um, elder care is unbelievably expensive and unbelievably complicated, uh, especially in Southern California. It was and during COVID, it was so difficult to get adequate care for them. And so I suddenly went from an artist who was, you know, struggling every year, not sure how we're gonna do, to um, I could take care of my parents exactly the way they needed, and very importantly for me, continue working. And so I could continue writing and doing those things that I would not have been able to do without the MacArthur.

Um, the first couple years, every penny went into my parents um and their care and um, caretaking. And um, you know, now that my father's passed, unfortunately, yeah, we're getting now we get to have some of that money, which is sad, but also, you know, he would be thrilled um that we can now start um doing some other things in our lives because of that, have some freedom to not just take any job. Um, but that also means that like this year, I'm doing six plays this year.

[25:57] Larissa FastHorse: And I can only do that because the MacArthur gave us the freedom to care for my parents, to take care of my family and know that I can be out of town and they're fine and I can and do all of this work.

[26:10] Gordon Cox: Uh, that was my next question. Deeply grateful for that.

[26:12] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, that was my next question. Six plays is a lot uh in several years, much less one year.

[26:18] Gordon Cox: How uh was it a backlog of the pandemic of like writing done during the pandemic? Or how did you, how have you cranked those out so quickly?

[26:27] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, these are plays that are spread out in development over many years and were supposed to happen pre-pandemic to brand new plays that just happened, you know, there's a whole backlog of, yeah, I think they're spread out over about six, seven years these plays as far as when I was developing them and they were supposed to happen. I was wild because I haven't, um, this play of the Thanksgiving play is my first production in four years because I actually intentionally took the season before not knowing the pandemic was coming, of course, I took the season before the pandemic off of new play because I'd had a couple years in a row with four productions a year and I just, I couldn't, I was so exhausted and burned out.

I was like, okay, the Thanksgiving play is launched, I'm gonna let it go and speak for me for a year while I take a year off and then I'll, and then during that year the pandemic happened and everything closed down. Then for three more years our entire field was closed.

[27:18] Larissa FastHorse: So um, so this is, you know, all those plays kind of backed up into one year. I'm very fortunate, you know, I love all the shows um they're all comedies uh and I get to, you know, do my work uh everywhere all over the country which is really exciting.

[27:34] Gordon Cox: Yeah, can you tell us about some of them? You mentioned the one that's at the Guthrie um but what, what else, what and where uh else are those shows happening?

[27:34] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, so I start here on Broadway um this, you know, the Thanksgiving play and then as soon as we open here they'll continue but I go straight to South Dakota where I'll be doing my third play with Cornerstone Theater Company and when Michael Junkar says my collaborator there and that's our third play in Indigenous communities and this time it's mine which I'm so excited. So we're doing a play called Wachune with the Lakota Dakota Nokoto people that will tour using local people performing the play, touring um like five reservations, I think around the state. And then we go, I come back to New York and I do the Democracy Project, which is going to be a like a tourist-based show at um Federal Hall here in New York, uh, which was the first capital of the United States.

And that's with five writers with Bruce Norris, Tanya Barfield, Melissa James Gibson, Lisa Damore, and then Michael R. Jackson wrote a song for it. And Tamil Um Woodard is directing. And so we'll be doing that show at the end of June and July.

[28:37] Larissa FastHorse: And then I go where from there. Oh, so the taper, Mark Taper Forum, where I'm doing uh Fake It Till You Make It, which is a farce, a satirical farce. It's big, broad, crazy. There's stairs and doors and lots of slamming and running and uh, you know, confused identities, etc. All the things that Farce has, with also some satire about race. And then I go to also directed by Michael John Cristess, and then Michael John Garcese is directing another the Guts replay because again, these were developed like six years apart and all landed in a row. So he and I are doing three shows together. And then I come back here to New York to launch the national tour of Peter Pan, which I've rewritten the book for.

[29:16] Gordon Cox: Right.

[29:16] Larissa FastHorse: And we'll be doing a long national tour before um hopefully opening it on Broadway the next holiday season.

[29:22] Gordon Cox: Right.

[29:23] Larissa FastHorse: And what can you tell us about the work you're doing uh in Hollywood right now for uh film and TV?

[29:30] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, I, you know, I obviously put that die down quite a bit right now because I am doing a lot of theater, and you know, fortunately from, you know, that's this is a horrible thing to say, but you know, with the pending potential strike. Um, yeah, I'm fortunate that I am doing a lot of theater this year, so I do have work continuing. Um, but I still have an open project with DreamWorks animation to do uh an animated feature with them. I developed another project with them that um ended up not going forward, so they gave me an open um script deal with them. I'm attached to two very large beloved musicals, I don't think I'm allowed to say, um, in the Rogers and Hammerstein um uh library to rewrite two of them, as you could probably guess if you think what you'd need a Native American writer to do.

But uh those are aimed one to be a film project and one to be a uh a TV series. Um, we're kind of pausing a moment for various reasons and also, you know, like everybody waiting to see what happens with the strike authorization and how that plays out. And then I'm uh in talks with a lot of, you know, I had several projects last year that you know didn't make it on the air. So now it's time to revamp and start looking at what I want to do next. Um, I'm talking to a lot of just, you know, production companies and just deciding what I want to do.

[30:41] Larissa FastHorse: Um, and where I want to put my energy next in television.

[30:44] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[30:45] Larissa FastHorse: So I will be honest, my last TV projects kind of broke my heart, is one at NBC and it was really, I, it was kind of my dream project. I started with Paul Telegi, and then you know, when he left that company, it didn't really find its champion and um, I love it so much. So it's been a little hard to go back to television. I think that, yeah, you try not to get too attached, but you do.

[31:07] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[31:09] Larissa FastHorse: Uh, as you mentioned, you're starting your year uh on Broadway. What uh in what ways does having the play on Broadway feel significant to you? What does it uh what does it mean for you personally and what do you feel like it means for uh the play overall and sort of the issues it tackles?

[31:28] Larissa FastHorse: Yeah, I mean, I've had this goal for a long time. I told my agent probably 10 years ago or more that I wanted to be the first Native American female playwright on Broadway because sadly we haven't had one that we know of. I suspect we have had one that has not identified that way for several reasons. Um, but uh we haven't. So I was very clear that I wanted to be that person. Um, so we've really been, you know, kind of aiming my career in that direction. The last known Native American playwright on Broadway was the Great Limbricks in the early part of the last century. And now we're in the early part of the next century before we've had another native playwright in Broadway, and that's just not okay.

Um, so that's hugely significant that you know I think it's significant both, you know, we need to hear the bad and the good. Like, yay, I'm the first Native American playwright that we know of on Broadway. But we need to hear that we haven't had one, another Native American playwright in almost like 80 years. So we need to know that and hear that and make sure that never happens again. And that's really important to me that we, I'm not the last, and that we do not wait another century to be able to have the next Native playwright. There's so many incredible Native playwrights all over this country. And um, my hope is that you know, a lot of the work I'm doing right now, um, both with my own show but also with other producers and things is opening a door and making it much easier for the next one, and that we keep having Native American playwrights on Broadway every year. So that's very significant and and matters to me.

[32:57] Larissa FastHorse: I think also, you know, for the play, you know, it's such a beloved play. I'm so fortunate the country has embraced it and it's performed all over the place. But I'll be honest, it hasn't often had like big stages, you know. It was, it's often put into the smaller space. And so to have Carol Rothman at second stage really say, no, this belongs on a Broadway-sized space, and to have a director like Rachel Chadkin really show how you can take a one-room show and make it seem expansive in Broadway, you know, like it seems bigger and larger and theatrical and dramatic and all the things and hilariously funny, of course. And the fact that we can do that with this play, I think will open a lot of venues for it to be in in very different theaters.

Um, Steppenwolf next year, which I'm super excited about. Um, yeah, it's a company I've always admired. I'm thrilled for them to be doing it. And yes, I think it's going to open a lot of doors for it to be done on larger spaces and let broader audiences see this play and and then start talking wrestling with the questions that it poses. And I hope a lot of people do that.

[34:00] Gordon Cox: Well, we can look forward to uh the artists who uh follow you through the door that you have opened uh on Broadway. And we can also look forward to your five other shows that we will have the chance to see this year.

[34:12] Gordon Cox: So um thanks so much for not escape Larissa FastHorse.

[34:18] Gordon Cox: Thanks so much for joining me, Larissa. It was great to talk to you. I really appreciate it.

[34:23] Larissa FastHorse: Thank you.

[34:27] Gordon Cox: That was Larissa FastHorse, whose comedy The Thanksgiving play is now at Second Stage's Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway. If you enjoyed this conversation and others we've done here on Stagecraft, I'd be so grateful if you took the time to rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. It really does help. Or tell a friend about Stagecraft. Find past episodes and subscribe at all the places you get your pods, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on the Broadway Podcast Network, which is a great place to find more theater for your ears. Until next episode, find me on Twitter at G Cox Variety. Thanks for listening and see you at the theater.