How ‘The Thanksgiving Play’ Is a Cautionary Tale About Education
Playwrights
Directors
Playwright Larissa FastHorse and director Rachel Chavkin on why this show hits so hard right now
—
The setup is juicy: Four well-meaning but misguided white folks—drama teacher Logan (Katie Finneran), her underemployed actor boyfriend Jaxton (Scott Foley), history buff Caden (Chris Sullivan) and ethnically ambiguous starlet Alicia (D’Arcy Carden)—attempt to devise a play about the authentic origins of Thanksgiving to present to elementary school students. Although they lean into our nation’s bloody past, their obliviousness and performative wokeness turn the piece into a hilarious turkey.
“These characters look the truth of the violence and the history in the face again and again, and somehow keep making the wrong decisions,” says director Rachel Chavkin. As a liberal white woman in theatre, she can relate. “The extent of the damage and violence that whiteness has wrought—and continues to do so—is endless. To a certain extent, even having conversations like this, I can feel like I’m quoting the play! That is both terrifying and exhilarating, and part of Larissa’s brilliance.”
The miseducation is only getting worse. Even innocuous stories, like Molly of Denali: Berry Itchy Day, are being banned simply because they’re told from a nonwhite perspective. “It’s about little Native kids going berry picking!” FastHorse says with irritation. “That really made me mad.”
Logan is “one of these educators who is trying to hold the truth of history on one side, and the delicacy of educating children on the other,” Chavkin says. While the director does not condone the “crazy decision” the character ultimately makes about sharing the background of the holiday, she understands how it happens. “I don’t want the audience to lose sight of the fact that there are teachers who are very palpably navigating this shit today.”
Despite so many real-life Thanksgiving school play fails, Chavkin and FastHorse are advocates for arts education. “Good art makes us think in complicated ways,” Chavkin says. “That skill, that capacity for nuance and for sitting with discomfort, is integral to being robust and resilient people as we learn to exist ethically with both the past and the present.”
Ultimately, The Thanksgiving Play is a cautionary tale about what happens when arts educators are not given the information, tools and support they need to succeed. “We need to really think about how we’re educating the theatre-makers,” FastHorse says. “Are we creating theatre-makers who understand what that role can be?”
—
TDF MEMBERS: At press time, discount tickets were available for The Thanksgiving Play. The show is also frequently available at our TKTS Discount Booths.
Sarah Rebell (she/her) is an arts journalist and musical theatre writer. Bylines include American Theatre, Hey Alma, Howlround, The Interval and TheaterMania. She is a National Critics Institute Fellow. Follow her at @SarahRebell.