The Thanksgiving Play on Broadway

Feast on the Broadway premiere of Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play, featuring a starry cast led by Emmy-nominated The Good Place and A League of Their Own star D'Arcy Carden. Get The Thanksgiving Play tickets on TodayTix.

FastHorse makes history as the first female Native American playwright to have a show on Broadway with The Thanksgiving Play. Experience tasty comedy and timely commentary at this play filled with “witty moments, funny situations and thought-provoking statements” (New York Theatre Guide), which received widespread acclaim off Broadway.

A makeshift troupe of four actors must devise an elementary school Thanksgiving show that centers the Native American perspective. The problem is, none of them are Indigenous. A cornucopia of issues arises as they weather interpersonal conflicts, guilt, and cultural cluelessness while attempting to create the show. As The New York Times raves, “Satire doesn’t get much richer than that.”

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A delicious group of celebs leads The Thanksgiving Play. Alongside Carden is This Is Us Emmy nominee Chris Sullivan, two-time Tony winner Katie Finneran (Promises, Promises; Noises Off), and TV veteran Scott Foley.

FastHorse is a member of the Sicangu Lakota nation of South Dakota. Her other plays include Landless, Native Nation, Cow Pie Bingo, and What Would Crazy Horse Do? FastHorse wrote The Thanksgiving Play after running into trouble getting her work produced, as they all require Indigenous talent that multiple theatres told her they could not find. She “charged herself with the exercise of writing a play about the Native American experience without having to cast Native Americans," reads a Thanksgiving Play review on New York Theatre Guide.

Playwrights Horizons premiered The Thanksgiving Play off Broadway to acclaim in 2018, and it's since been produced in various theatres across the country. In 2021, a starry reading was streamed online, featuring Bobby Cannavale, Keanu Reeves, Heidi Schreck, and Alia Shawkat.

Directing The Thanksgiving Play on Broadway is Rachel Chavkin, best known for her Tony-winning direction of Hadestown and Tony-nominated work on Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. This theatre season, she's also co-directing How to Defend Yourself off Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop.

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What to Watch For

• The Thanksgiving Play mentions multiple ill-advised classroom activities designed to “correctly” teach young kids about Thanksgiving, such as writing letters of apology to Native Americans. All are real-life examples of curricula FastHorse found online.
• The Thanksgiving Play is deeply American, but FastHorse actually wrote it while in Ireland. She received a grant to write there for 10 days.
• FastHorse's first play, Average Family, featured real trees and fire on stage, along with an 800-gallon pool!
• Before becoming a playwright, FastHorse spent years training as a ballet dancer, even teaching ballet herself for a short while.