By David Greenham

A staging of The Thanksgiving Play needs to be rooted in the dramatist’s demand that the script shock: it should traumatize the ancestors of the perpetrators.

The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse. Directed by Tara Moses. Scenic design by Baron E. Pugh. Lighting design by Jonah Bobilin. Costume design by Asa Benally. Sound design by Aubrey Dube. Produced by Moonbox Productions at Arrow Street Arts, Cambridge, through December 15.

Ohad Ashkenazi, Jasmine Rochelle Goodspeed, Marisa Diamond, and Johnny Gordon in the Moonbox Productions staging of The Thanksgiving Play. Photo: Sharman Altshuler

Sicangu Lakota Nation playwright Larissa FastHorse was frustrated that her scripts, which called for Indigenous actors, would receive premiere productions and then rarely be produced again. Repeatedly, she heard a familiar cry from theaters: there aren’t enough Indigenous actors to cast.

In 2015 she made the strategic decision to write a play featuring all non-native actors. The result is the satirical and hard-hitting comedy The Thanksgiving Play.

Lyric Stage produced the script in 2019 and it has become one of the most frequently staged shows in the country. It even enjoyed a limited Broadway run in the spring of 2023.

Providence-based director Tara Moses, a citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, writes in her director’s notes that she was traumatized while watching the Broadway production of The Thanksgiving Play. She and her Native friends mourned that the racism and violence within the performance took a psychological toll. She writes “I vowed then and there that if I were approached to direct The Thanksgiving Play, it would be different. It would have to be.”

The Moonbox production boasts a full cast and many members of the crew who identify as BIPOC artists, particularly Indigenous artists.

The story centers on Logan (Jasmine Goodspeed), a high school drama teacher in an unnamed Massachusetts school district. She’s trying to work her way into favor in the school district again after her high school production of The Iceman Cometh prompted 300 parents to sign a petition demanding her dismissal. Her boyfriend, Jaxon (Johnny Gordon), is ‘politically correct to a fault.’ Caden (Ohad Ashkenazi) is an elementary teacher in the district, with a passion for history and aspirations but no experience in the theater. Alicia (Marisa Diamond) is the ringer. She’s a ‘professional actor’ from Los Angeles. She’s cast primarily because it’s assumed that she’s an Indigenous person or, as Logan states, “Our Native American compass.”

The four meet in Logan’s classroom with the goal of devising an appropriate Thanksgiving play for the elementary students in the district.

Jasmine Rochelle Goodspeed and Johnny Gordon in the Moonbox Productions staging of The Thanksgiving Play. Photo: Sharman Altshuler

The narrative line is mostly a gimmick — a way for the playwright to expose many of the factual inaccuracies and fictional follies of our white-centered celebration of ‘thanks.’

Scattered among the plot’s concatenation of scenes are absurd and offensive glimpses into actual examples of holiday school activities that FastHorse ferreted out on the internet. A painful adaptation of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” opens the play: “the Natives” replace “my true love” in the lyrics. The gifts include moccasins, bows and arrows, tom toms, etc. At the end of this display, Logan sincerely suggests that teachers can divide their class into Indians and Pilgrims “so that the Indians can practice sharing.” Another interlude refers to “two little ‘Injuns’ foolin’ with a gun.” At one point, we hear the performers sing lesser-known lyrics to “Home on the Range,” which include “the Red man was pressed, from this part of the west….” Met with skepticism by Logan and some company members that those could be the words that were used, one actor says, “Look it up, it’s historical. Quit being so sensitive.”

Meanwhile, the devised play begins to crack when the creators’ overzealous efforts at DEI inclusivity conflicts with Caden’s earnest desire to provide a semi-accurate history. One radical alternative: they decide that they should recreate the Pequot massacre of 1637, which took place in nearby Mystic, CT. The murder of more than 500 adults and children is acted out in a grotesque manner that soon degenerates into a game. The scene is horrific — the playwright intends it to be.

Needless to say, The Thanksgiving Play is a multi-layered satire that is aimed directly at white people. It skewers the self-serving myths made about the Pilgrims and America’s treatment of Indigenous people from Columbus on, but also lampoons the DEI movement and its liberal allies, educators, theater artists, and anyone else it can think of. FastHorse’s goal was to make audience members as uncomfortable as possible. In fact, the dramatist considers it a two-act play. The first act is the 90-minutes you spend in the theater watching the performance; the second act will be all the thinking and discussing that she hopes spectators will do afterwards.

Unfortunately, Tara Moses and Moonbox Productions fall short of the potential of both acts. This is partly because the staging feels under-produced. Scenic designer Baron E. Pugh’s striking classroom space is well supported by Jonah Bobilin’s lighting and Aubrey Dube’s capable sound design. But Asa Benally’s costumes are inadequate, especially when it comes to the ridiculous step-out production number scenes.

It’s hard to figure out why the performances were so uneven, the play’s characters arcs so contradictory and wobbly. The actors, along with the script, probably share the blame. Aside from Jasmine Goodspeed’s Logan, the cast seemed more focused on putting across the play’s inane comic bits rather than powering the story it was trying to tell.

On top of that, director Moses moves the performers around in what seem to be random patterns. At times it is difficult for audience members to determine who or what they should be focusing on. In more active scenes, where specific directions in blocking and choreography are wanting, confusion reigns: each actor seems to be on their own.

But the real culprit, I fear, is Moses’ mission for the production. The Broadway staging that she saw was gutsy and hard hitting. It was meant to be. And yes, there is a risk of traumatizing or re-traumatizing those whose ancestors have been the victims of the hate. It’s terrific that a cast of white presenting BIPOC performers and supporting artists have been brought in to be part of this production. But I would argue that the original intent of The Thanksgiving Play needs to be respected. A production should not be softened; it should be rooted in the dramatist’s demand that the script shock. The evening is meant to traumatize the ancestors of the perpetrators. It’s supposed to be disagreeable to watch; it is anxious to rub our noses in the injustices and bloodshed of American history.

And this is just the time to do that. Whatever we might think were the reasons for the outcome of our recent presidential election, the hateful and racist rhetoric of the winner and his supporters rob many of us of one of the key excuses we used last time when we said, with exculpatory fervor: “He doesn’t represent the America I know.”

As we head into the next four years, we cannot say that the lessons of the first act of The Thanksgiving Play are surprising. We now know what is true about us; what’s true about Americans. The second act will be the most valuable in the future: not only concerning what we think, but inspiring actions we are going to take to change the way things are.

David Greenham is an arts and culture consultant, adjunct lecturer on Drama at the University of Maine at Augusta, and is the former executive director of the Maine Arts Commission. He can be found at https://davidgreenham.com/