the playwright
the playwright
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Larissa FastHorse
Larissa FastHorse
Photo credit: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Photo credit: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota Nation) is an award-winning writer and 2020-2025 MacArthur Fellow. In 2023 her satirical comedy, The Thanksgiving Play, will make her the first female Native American playwright on Broadway when it opens at the Helen Hayes under the direction of Rachel Chavkin. Additional new plays in 2023 include Fake It Until You Make It at the CTG Mark Taper Forum and a tour of Wicoun with Cornerstone Theater Company. Selected past plays include What Would Crazy Horse Do? (KCRep), Landless and Cow Pie Bingo (AlterTheater), Average Family (Children’s Theater Company of Minneapolis), Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: a Class Presentation (Native Voices at the Autry), Vanishing Point (Eagle Project), Cherokee Family Reunion (Mountainside Theater), as well as numerous productions of The Thanksgiving Play including Playwrights Horizons, The Geffen Playhouse, and Artists Rep.
In 2019 Larissa returned to film and television by co-creating a series at Freeform. Since then she has set up projects with Disney Channel, NBC, Dreamworks, Netflix, and wrote on a series for Apple+. She is in development on projects with several production companies, including adapting three beloved Broadway musicals.
Over the past several years Larissa has created a nationally recognized trilogy of community engaged theatrical experiences with Cornerstone Theater Company and her collaborative partner, Michael John Garcés. The first was Urban Rez in Los Angeles. The second project, Native Nation, was the largest Indigenous theater production in the history of American theater with over 400 Native artists involved in the productions in association with ASU Gammage. Their current project, Wicoun is set in Larissa’s homelands of South Dakota. Their radical inclusion process with Indigenous tribes has been honored with the most prestigious national arts funding from Creative Capital, MAP Fund, NEFA, First People’s Fund, the NEA Our Town Grant, Mellon Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Native Arts and Cultures, and others.
Some additional theaters that have commissioned or developed plays with Larissa include Second Stage, The Public, Yale Rep, Guthrie, Seattle Rep, Geffen Playhouse, History Theater, Kennedy Center TYA, Baltimore’s Center Stage, Arizona Theater Company, Mixed Blood, Perseverance Theater Company, The Lark Playwrights Week, and Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor.
Larissa’s additional awards include the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award for an American Playwright, NEA Distinguished New Play Development Grant, Joe Dowling Annamaghkerrig Fellowship, AATE Distinguished Play Award, Inge Residency, Sundance/Ford Foundation Fellowship, Aurand Harris Fellowship, and the UCLA Native American Program Woman of the Year.
Larissa’s company, Indigenous Direction, is a consulting company currently working with national clients including Western Arts Alliance, Guthrie Theater, Roundabout Theater Company, Macy’s, and Brown University. She is co-vice chair of the board of directors of Playwrights Horizons and represented by Jonathan Mills at Paradigm NY and Liza Montesano of Schreck Rose Dapello Adams Berlin & Dunham LLP. She lives in Santa Monica with her husband, the sculptor Edd Hogan. www.hoganhorsestudio.com
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