The Thanksgiving Play on Broadway

MacArthur Genius Larissa FastHorse’s shocking satire flips the bird on one of America's most prolific myths. THE THANKSGIVING PLAY arrives on Broadway in a brutally funny and raw new production directed by Tony Award winner Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown, Great Comet). When a troupe of really, really well-meaning theater artists attempt to put on a culturally sensitive Thanksgiving school pageant, things get messy. Hilarious and poignant, this delicious play skewers everything right, wrong, and woke in America. The Hollywood Reporter raves, “It’s uproarious, clever and very, very funny! Something for which to be truly thankful.

Feast on the Broadway premiere of Larissa FastHorse's The Thanksgiving Play, at Second Stage Theater this spring. Get The Thanksgiving Play tickets on TodayTix.

The Thanksgiving Play is a kind of show-within-a-show. The play centers on a makeshift troupe of four actors, who have to devise an elementary school-level Thanksgiving show that centers the Native American perspective. The problem is, none of the actors are Indigenous. A cornucopia of problems arise as they weather interpersonal conflicts, guilt, and cultural cluelessness while attempting to create the show.

Playwrights Horizons premiered The Thanksgiving Play off Broadway to acclaim in 2018, and it's since been produced in various theatres across the country. In 2021, a starry reading was streamed online, featuring Bobby Cannavale, Keanu Reeves, Heidi Schreck, and Alia Shawkat.

Directing The Thanksgiving Play on Broadway is Rachel Chavkin, best known for her Tony-winning direction of Hadestown and Tony-nominated work on Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. This theatre season, she's also co-directing How to Defend Yourself off Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop.

Get tickets to The Thanksgiving Play in New York on TodayTix now.

What to Watch For

• FastHorse is the first Native American woman to have a play on Broadway.
• The Thanksgiving Play reflects a real-life challenge of FastHorse's: casting her plays authentically. "Not being able to get her plays produced... FastHorse charged herself with the exercise of writing a play about the Native American experience without having to cast Native Americans," reads a Thanksgiving Play review on New York Theatre Guide.
• The Thanksgiving Play is deeply American, but FastHorse actually wrote it while in Ireland. She received a grant to write there for 10 days.
• FastHorse's first play, Average Family, featured real trees and fire on stage, along with an 800-gallon pool!
• Before becoming a playwright, FastHorse spent years training as a ballet dancer, even teaching ballet herself for a short while.