by Linda Chin
The Thanksgiving Play – Written by Larissa FastHorse; Directed by Scott Edmiston; Scenic Design by Janie E. Howland; Sound Design/Original Music by Dewey Dellay; Costume Design by Rachel Padula-Shufelt; Lighting Design by Karen Perlow. Presented by Lyric Stage Company, 140 Clarendon St., Boston through Nov. 10
In the opening scene of The Thanksgiving Play, now being presented at the Lyric Stage, the first of several children’s Thanksgiving limericks and songs within the play starts with verse, sung by a single white male Pilgrim (Barlow Adamson) to the familiar tune of the “Twelve Days of Christmas.”
On the fourth day of Thanksgiving, the natives gave to me –
4 Cornucopias,
3 Chief headdresses,
2 turkey gobblers and,
A pumpki-in in a pumpkin patch.
The native woman who gives him the ‘appropriate’ props for each line is ethnically-ambiguous actor Grace Experience, dressed in ‘authentic’ Disney Pocahontas garb. On the fifth day of Thanksgiving, she not only gives him a set of five bows and arrows but gives it to him in a more pointed way than he expects. No shrinking violent, she emerges from the house left aisle in shooting form, pulls back on the bow – and – chaos ensues.
Tensions between the pair of actors have been escalating during the skit we’ve just witnessed (and where we get to play the roles of audience members, in this case elementary school students). If you’re wondering what could possibly be contributing to the conflict between pilgrim and native, it’s in large measure the combination of silly costumes, ludicrous lyrics and confusing direction that’s all part of an actor’s day’s work, for little (or no) pay. Note that it takes someone with the directing prowess of Scott Edmiston to pull off the parody and the impression of bad directing, augmented by the ability of these actors to so effectively play dumb even when they’re really smart.
The Pilgrim is a sanctimonious scene partner who invokes his privilege and turkey jerky-ness by gobbling up the spotlight and treating the native like she’s far lower on the totem pole. She has no opportunity to incorporate her individual touch or even have any Vanna White-like moments as the able assistant to the star. He really crosses the line when he pressures her to fetch his props faster and faster, even furiously rolling his hands on stage to suggest that she hurry up or speed up those slow-sparking female synapses. And when she reacts, it’s a terrific comic moment. And so begins the briskly-paced, bitingly-pointed The Thanksgiving Play at Lyric Stage. The audience groaned and laughed with glee during “the first five days” and when our not-very-passive Pocahontas princess pelts him with six pairs of moccasins (on the “sixth day of Thanksgiving”) about five minutes in, I was already hooked.
For The Thanksgiving Play, the Lyric stage has been transformed into a classroom in Anytown (Except LA), USA, with a simple yet clever design by the extraordinarily creative #herdesignsnevergetold Janie E. Howland. A troupe of four theater artists (Jesse Hinson, Amanda Collins, Grace Experience, and Barlow Adamson) have been invited to a gathering to devise a play that celebrates Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Month. It must comply with theater educator and director Logan’s (Collins) multiple grants, and must not further anger the 300 parents who signed a petition protesting Logan’s last school production of The Iceman Cometh and want her head on a platter. And of course it must be understandable and meaningful to young students who don’t know the difference between fact and fiction, so it must be dumbed down or highly exaggerated.
There’s little budget, so Logan includes the free help of her actor-boyfriend, a yogi and street performer (Hinson), a third grade history teacher (Adamson) who is a theater artist wannabe, and allocates her grant money to a professional actor (from LA, of course) who is supposedly Native American and intended to be the designated cultural compass to tell the “true” story. Turns out that Alicia (Experience), while gorgeous, is not Native American. Horrified at the “cultural inappropriateness” of the casting, they turn to experimenting with scenes where white actors play roles that only white actors “should play”, leading to a Thanksgiving dinner with empty chairs where the Native Americans should be.
In addition to being very funny, the play transported me to the under-resourced NYC public school classrooms of my childhood. Our school budget certainly didn’t include funds for visiting artists, but instead my immigrant parents collected the turkeys we made by carefully tracing our handprints with Crayola crayons on colored construction paper – versus the cultural bounty of the land of the prosperous and free (aka Gold Mountain). The play also illustrates that coming together to convene family, friends and strangers and expressing gratitude on Thanksgiving is not mutually exclusive to respecting the injustices towards Native Americans.
But lest we think that the skits, classroom activities, and songs that playwright Larissa FastHorse has incorporated into her play that purportedly celebrate Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Month are absurd parodies meant to drive home a point – wrong. Many were lifted directly from classroom material that FastHorse uncovered in her research or through life experience – which, while ludicrous, is more than a little disturbing.
While what The Thanksgiving Play represents in terms of diversity, inclusion, belonging, and power, and the responsibility that theater producers and directors bear as truthful storytellers comes through, it never hits you over the head with its messaging or preaches to the choir. Lyric Stage’s production really gets it right with Larissa FastHorse’s work. And for her, and them, I am grateful. For tickets and information, go to: https://www.lyricstage.com/
Experience is not ethnically ambiguous