Larissa FastHorse is a Sicangu Lakota Nation playwright, director, and choreographer currently based in Santa Monica, California. She always wrote on scrap pieces of paper growing up, but she never pursued creative writing formally or even had a consistent journal. It wasn't until much later in life that she returned to her love of writing in a professional context.

Growing up in South Dakota, FastHorse spent most of her life as a ballet dancer, but was forced to retire after ten years of dancing professionally due to an injury. Dance is still infused into her present work as a theatre artist however. After retiring from ballet, FastHorse dabbled in acting briefly. Although she mused that actors are "just dancers with furniture," this career change did not provide the same fulfillment as dancing.

FastHorse revisited her childhood passion for writing when she began writing for TV and film in Los Angeles. Entirely self-taught as a writer, with only a year of college compiled from various schools, FastHorse relied upon her many great mentors as well as her innate talent. She wrote pilots for Fox and TeenNick, but she didn’t feel at home in this professional sphere either. Once FastHorse got into the Sundance feature film program, she began to get noticed in the film and theatre worlds as a Native American writer creating Native American characters. In 2007, Peter Brosius of Tony Award winning LORT Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis contacted FastHorse asking her to write a Theatre for Young Audiences show. He then commissioned her first ever play Average Family.

FastHorse has been a playwright for eleven years now, and she is successful with her work both on and off the stage. She has had thirteen plays commissioned and written three more of her own volition. In 2000, FastHorse was a delegate to the United Nations in Geneva where she spoke on the power film can have for Indigenous Peoples. She is an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Sicangu Lakota Nation.

Like many playwrights, FastHorse still struggles with securing a second staging of her works. She believes this is most likely because many theatre companies can’t afford to search for Indigenous talent for her plays. She reflects that she's technically living below poverty line as a writer at the moment, but she’s found her calling and could not be more thrilled to give voice to untold stories onstage.

Synopsis

When the boisterous Kenny and Martin and the mousy Amanda are given less than satisfactory presentation assignments for their last project of middle school, they turn to each other for help. They combine their topics into the preposterously poignant, “Teaching Disco Square Dancing to Our Elders.” An unlikely trio, full-Lakota Kenny and Martin only ask half-Lakota half-white Amanda to join their team so they can have a female dance partner. Amanda however is thrilled by the opportunity to make some friends, as well as learn more about her native heritage from the boys and Kenny’s grandmother. Each hormonally charged character has something different at stake: Kenny needs to pass this presentation to get into high school, Martin desperately longs for a way to escape his alcoholic household, and Amanda debates whether or not to meet her birth mother. The play serves as their own “hunka” or “family by choice” ceremony as each character finds a trusted family member in the other and in Grandma Two Hawks, who helps mentor these misfits along the way.

Intended Audience

This play is one of several Theatre for Young Audience productions written by Larissa FastHorse. She feels compelled to create stories in which young Native Americans can find themselves, but her work often transcends culture. This play is no exception. Although the intended audience is middle and high school students, with its humor and the search for identity and connection, this play offers messages that are pertinent to all ages.

Educational and Artistic Applications and Activities

• Teaching Disco Squaredancing could be used in conjunction with a history course that delves into Native American history. This play provides cultural context for the Lakota Nation that gives breath to real people and stories. In fact, one of the characters, Amanda, is inspired by Larissa FastHorse's own story of her relationship with her birth mother. Each student could then research his/her own chosen Native American tribe in order to show how although interconnected, each tribe has its own unique stories and culture.
• Despite being a Theatre for Young Audiences production, this play could provide monologues, scene work, or a performance piece for a middle or high school acting class. Students in groups of four or five could take on various performance and production roles such as actor, director, and stage manager in order to learn more about how to rehearse and stage a scene.
• Middle or high school students create their own "disco squaredance." Each student chooses one style of dance to research. Classmates are then put into groups of two or three and must find a way to combine and present these dance styles to their peers while still providing some historical, social, and cultural background on each separate dance form.
• The play also touches on the issues of alcoholism and assault. Teaching Disco Squaredancing could be employed as a case study in a drama therapy, sexual education, or alcohol education course.
• For those P.E. teachers who still teach square dancing, (I know I took that in middle school), this could provide a fun showcase opportunity, or it could be used with a dance or drama teacher’s “dance through the decades,” unit.
• This text demonstrates that not only are the stories of young people compelling, but they are universal and audiences need to hear more of them. Teaching Disco Squaredancing could be a jumping off point for a playwriting or creative writing course that not only allows but encourages students to write stories about issues and themes that are relevant and matter to them. In order to write a heritage inspired piece, students could interview an "elder" in their family, in order to gain some insight into their family's culture, traditions, and stories. Or similar to Amanda's interactions with Grandma Two Hawks, perhaps this elder can be someone outside of the student's family, but someone with whom the student has found a connection, whether it be through culture, interests/hobbies, or simply geographic location.

Discussion Questions

• In the LA Times review of the play, FastHorse says, "My goal is to make the crises, the silliness and sadness the characters go through happen as organically as they do in kids' lives...you can be doing some crazy, goofy disco thing one minute and then the next minute, things get really real." Are the younger characters an accurate and/or universal representation of middle school students? Do they provide role models for young people today?
• Many educators believe in the importance of students finding themselves within the cultures and stories of the characters they read. Does this empathy and/or ability to relate change when the characters are of a similar age to the audience members or readers themselves? How?
• In the play, FastHorse defines "hunka" as, "a family by choice." How does the concept of hunka manifest itself in this play?
• How does the use of nonverbal communication, both in the disco square dancing and in FastHorse’s use of stage directions, help tell this story?
• How does nonverbal communication function differently for a story that connects pubescent characters to an older generation?
• As seen in the quote at the top of this page, in an interview with DC Metro Theatre Arts, FastHorse says, "Take some responsibility for your own ignorance and get educated. Ask questions. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. It’s through mistakes that we learn. I hear this scenario far too often: 'We produced a Native play/character once and a Native actor/patron got really upset so we haven’t done another one.' I then ask, 'Have you ever had a white actor/patron get really upset?' 'Of course.' 'Did that make you stop producing all white plays/characters?' 'No.'" So what do well-meaning allies need to know to help avoid sensitivity-born paralysis? How does FastHorse’s statement apply to educators, artists, and the world at large?

Synopsis: In FastHorse’s first play Average Family, the Roubidouxes, a Native American family, compete against the Monroe’s on a reality TV show for the grand prize of an RV. The two families get back to the basics in the great outdoors without modern comforts or technology, and at first it appears that the rustic Monroes will comfortably beat the begrudging Roubidouxes. As the play unfolds however, the Roubidouxes win more than the grand prize when they get in touch with their culture, nature, and most importantly, each other.

Educational and artistic applications: This play provides commentary on technology’s distancing effect of family members from one another, the importance of sharing cultural traditions from one generation to the next, and how the simplicity of the earth can bring peace and togetherness. This play could be particularly useful when paired with a nature-based field trip, in order to separate students from technology and social media. Another application is connecting the play to a family unit or even a nonfiction writing unit, which involves interviewing family members about one’s cultural background, ancestry, and stories.

Summary: In this meta-theatrical and comedic play, four white theatre artists attempt to devise a politically correct show honoring Thanksgiving during Native American Heritage Month. The wacky collaborators include: the drama teacher on probation, a yoga aficionado, a history teacher, and an actor from LA. As they all try to give voice to the Indigenous People who aren’t present in the room, they speak in circles about how to create a Thanksgiving play that is both school appropriate, but also educates students on the atrocities suffered by Native Americans during the first Thanksgiving. Despite their good intentions, the final performance isn’t all they had hoped it would be. Interspersed throughout their debates and devising, the audience sees snippets of the final product created: turkey songs and an evasion of truth in order to avoid conflict and offense.

Educational and artistic applications: FastHorse challenged herself to “write a play that deals with Native American issues and in a way that removes the excuse of casting difficulty from the equation[...]. [She] know[s] that American audiences are hungry to learn more about Native American issues through art because otherwise they don’t learn about them in this country.” FastHorse brilliantly succeeds with this ambition, and this would be a great play to read in order to unpack the whitewashing of Thanksgiving in America for older elementary, middle school, and high school students. It could also be a play taught at the start of a course that focuses on artists of color or one that addresses diversity in general in order to drive home the point that without conflict, mistakes, and discomfort, there is no education and growth.

The Thanksgiving Play: An Interview with Playwright Larissa FastHorse

An Interview with Playwright Larissa FastHorse. (2016, October 11). Retrieved October 28, 2017, from http://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2016/10/10/interview-playwright-larissa-fasthorse/

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FastHorse, L.. (2009, March 16). Retrieved October 21, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZqbI6-aTFo

FastHorse, L. (2015). What Is Straight White Male Identity?. American Theatre, 32(4), 60.

FastHorse, L. (n.d.). Larissa FastHorse - Playwright/Choreographer. Retrieved October 21, 2017, from http://www.hoganhorsestudio.com/about-larissa/

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Hoke, Donna. “PLONY Interview #12: Larissa FastHorse, Los Angeles, California.” Http://Blog.donnahoke.com/, 18 June 2017, blog.donnahoke.com/plony-interview-12-larissa-fasthorse-los-angeles-california/.

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Larissa FastHorse. (n.d.). Retrieved October 21, 2017, from https://newplayexchange.org/users/1415/larissa-fasthorse

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North Dakota Project. (n.d.). The History and Culture of the Standing Rock Oyate. Retrieved October 21, 2017, from http://www.ndstudies.org/resources/IndianStudies/standingrock/glossary.html

Playwright Larissa FastHorse on the Urban Indian Experience. (2016, March 25). Retrieved October 25, 2017, from https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/urban-rez-cornerstone-theater-larissa-fasthorse

Reinholz, R. (2009, March 16). Retrieved October 21, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBZOeHvFPvw

Royce, Graydon. "'Average Family' learns simple life; Writer Larissa FastHorse taps into two distinct worlds - reality TV and the rural prairie - in a play premiering at Children's Theatre." Star Tribune [Minneapolis, MN], 7 Sept. 2007, p. 01F.

Smith, T. (2016). AN INTERVIEW WITH A TRUE “URBAN REZ” GUY. News From Native California, 29(4), 8-15.

The Thanksgiving Play: an interview with playwright Larissa FastHorse. (n.d.). Retrieved October 28, 2017, from http://howlround.com/the-thanksgiving-play-an-interview-with-playwright-larissa-fasthorse

Watts, N. (2015, February 04). Retrieved October 21, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXxUE56h9jc&t=2s

Web page compiled by Meghan Crosby (2017)