David and Hannah Mirvish & Pop-Up Theatre Canada / The Thanksgiving Play, by Larissa FastHorse, directed by Vinetta Strombergs, CAA Theatre, closes Oct. 20. Tickets here.
The heart of The Thanksgiving Play is in the right place, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse has an important agenda in her satirical comedy The Thanksgiving Play (2018), which is receiving its Canadian premiere. She takes on woke culture while pointing out hidden biases against Indigenous people, and she does this without having one Indigenous person among her cast of characters.
To celebrate Native American Heritage Month, four people are gathered together to create a culturally sensitive play about the First Thanksgiving for elementary school students. American Thanksgiving celebrates the oft told story of Indigenous people saving the Pilgrims from starvation. Not only do the creators have to deal with woke issues in general, they are also up against specific woke school board rules as well.
Logan (Rachel Cairns) is a high school drama teacher/director in charge of the Thanksgiving Play project. She must succeed in this endeavour or else she will lose her job. It seems that 300 angry parents signed a petition against her for mounting Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh with her students. Logan once tried to be an actress in Los Angeles but failed after six weeks.
Jaxton (Colin A. Doyle) is a street performer/yoga instructor and Logan’s boyfriend. Like Logan, he tries to be politically correct at all times.
Caden (Craig Lauzon) is an elementary school history teacher and the school board liaison to ensure historical accuracy in the Thanksgiving Play.
Finally, Alicia (Jada Rifkin) is a professional actress whom Logan hired to be the Native American presence in the play, only for Logan to discover that Alicia is not Indigenous. Logan hired her from her publicity picture in Native American garb, which is just one of the many ethnic roles Alicia can play.
Thus, Logan and her colleagues are tasked with devising a play without any input from Native Americans, and in their subsequent creative process, playwright FastHorse satirizes all the ways the cast attempts to establish a Native American presence when they are not there, particularly by stressing what they can’t do, like playing Red Face.
The Production
Sadly, this Canadian production falls flat, and the laughs are few and far between.
The cast and director Vinetta Strombergs try hard to make the play work, but they are defeated by over-acting and slow pacing. It is almost as if the cast is forcing the humour on the audience with their laboured delivery.
As well, there is no sense of ensemble. It seems as if every actor is out for themselves. Collectively, they make FastHorse’s dialogue seem clunky.
The one part of The Thanksgiving Play that works is the video element. Scattered throughout the piece are outrageously biased videos against Native Americans that are savage in their humour. On this level, FastHorse’s satire works brilliantly.
For example, actor Elley Ray Hennessy portrays a teacher singing ridiculous Thanksgiving lyrics to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas while the visuals demean Native People. Then there is puppeteer Eric Woolfe and his equally outrageous rendition of Ten Little Indians, featuring stereotypical Native American puppets. A high school choir singing Home on the Range contains laugh-out-loud Native tokenism.
These videos are also followed by hilarious politically incorrect notes from teachers, with suggestions like dividing the class into a game of “Indjun” and “Pilgrim”.
The ending of the play features a moving video of Native Americans presenting their own Thanksgiving Address, and so we finally get to hear from the Indigenous people who are not represented in the play.
Creative Team
On a positive note, set and props co-designers Anahita Dehbonehie and Niloufar Ziaee have created a school rehearsal room filled with a chaotic jumble of gym equipment, desks and chairs, cardboard scenery and a costume rack. Not only do the actors have to negotiate their way through this morass, the set and props also mirror the chaotic nature of the play.
Apparently, FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play is one of the most produced plays in American regional theatre, and I can certainly see the allure of the satire.
Unfortunately, this production does not show off the script to any advantage.
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