Let’s get the mea culpas out of the way right now. As a kid who built missions in fourth grade and then assigned the same to my students when I taught California history, as a kid who made black construction paper buckle hats and dreamed of firing a musket and then tasked my kids to make the same headwear, I know too well the characters in The Thanksgiving Play, written by Larissa FastHorse and directed by Kimberly Ridgeway at the Altarena Playhouse.
I should also acknowledge that I’m an actor and director. That’s important because the plot of The Thanksgiving Play involves a quartet of seemingly well-meaning people putting on a show for kids that’s meant to right all the wrongs done to Native Americans by white Americans. The leader is Logan the director, then Jaxton the thespian, Caden the aspiring playwright, and Alicia the actor. I know these people, these are my people.
My praise of this production starts with the costumes. Ava Byrd is clearly a theater person—in dressing these characters she gave each one a signature item (or several), signaling that they are people of the theater, stage denizens, artists awaiting the rising of the curtain. Logan, played wonderfully by Cary Ann Rosko, is sensible and casual, so she wears a long flowing shirt and sweater, enabling her to move unbound all about. The hilarious Will Livingstone is Jaxton, and dons a pair of what at one time were called Hammer pants, baggy and black, along with matching black yoga slippers. (Pause for a moment of Zen.) Tyler Iiams’ earnest and charming Caden wears glasses, is bearded, and has fun socks. But it’s Alicia, played with comic ridiculousness by Anna Kosiarek, who steals the clothes show. When last seen at the Altarena, Kosiarek was Sister James in Doubt, shrouded in black and wearing a wimple. For this play, however, the actor is attired in shiny black leggings, a crop top, fun jacket, and heels. She’s LA in every way possible.
The outfits are but one layer of satire in this play. The drama classroom set has production posters, headshots, and actor snacks. Actors need snacks, so FastHorse uses this as ammunition for skewering. She also adds a fun production element by including videos of theater educators based on those she found on the internet. In director Ridgeway’s version, they’re four equally earnest white people dressed as turkeys or pilgrims, singing songs both silly and offensive. Damion Clark, Filip Hofman, Heather Kellogg-Baumann, and Caroline Schneider make up the on-camera ensemble, with, frankly, Schneider being Schneider and earning an Academy Award nomination for her perfectly over-the-top antics. Her bits are the funniest of many funny bits.
But what about the play, the story, the theme, the reason for the whole thing? This is where things get complicated. Hamlet famously observed that “the purpose of playing…is to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature.” In this case FastHorse has written a hugely successful play that was one of the most produced across the country, was done on Broadway, and was part of why she was named a MacArthur Fellow (Genius) in 2020. The Thanksgiving Play is her mirror, which she holds up and used to hit us over the head.
Ridgeway’s direction of the play is terrific, so she helps hold and hits us, as do the actors who are all really good at portraying people whose foolish hearts are on their sleeves. The production has an SNL sketch vibe to it, and is impressive in how much territory is covered in one long act. History, education, theater, vegetarianism, football, hair flipping, flirting, artist grants, and woke-ism are all stirred and served to us in the audience. We laugh, we grimace, and then we laugh some more.
For me, though, I love the holiday. Not for where it came from nor for what it meant. When we neared Thanksgiving break, and after learning more about the myths, we talked in my classes about the National Day of Mourning, the Alcatraz Occupation protests, though not nearly enough about Native American history. But I wanted to send my students home with something meaningful, so we focused on being thankful—for family, for food, for football even. So I’ll say this about the play: I’m thankful for it, for how it reminds us of how ignorant we were, to the extent we still are, and how it mocks the clumsily zealous efforts of those trying to do better. But mostly because The Thanksgiving Play is what it shows, it’s marvelously meta, it’s the story of people trying to figure out how to solve a problem, and we in watching it become part of the process, actors in a sense ourselves, working on the script so we can perform as conscious, caring citizens.
The Thanksgiving Play runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. through November 24. For tickets and information visit the Altarena Playhouse website.
Gene Kahane is the founder of the Foodbank Players, a lifelong teacher, and former Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda. Reach him at [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Gene-Kahane.
