Interview: Larissa FastHorse Talks About Well-Meaning White People and Theater’s Power to Heal

In June 2023, Larissa FastHorse’s Broadway debut, The Thanksgiving Play, was ending its limited run. That same month, Center Theatre Group announced that for financial reasons, it was canceling all shows in its 2023-24 season, including the world premiere of FastHorse’s Fake It Until You Make It. It was a tough time for FastHorse. “If having a really well-received Broadway show doesn’t make you Teflon, nothing does, so I’m a lot more clear-eyed about the process and about how things can change in a moment,” FastHorse says.

Now the show is finally having its long-awaited world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum, where it’s running through March 9 in a co-production with Arena Stage, where it will run April 3-May 4. The production is directed by Michael John Garcés, FastHorse’s longtime collaborator who requested that she write a farce. Fake It Until You Make It has all the door slams and mistaken identities you would expect while exploring complex identity issues such as race-shifting.

FastHorse spoke to TheaterMania about healing from the pain of the cancellation, often being the first Native American playwright to be produced in spaces, and more.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You write a lot about well-meaning white people. Why does that interest you?
These are the people I work and live with, to be perfectly honest. That’s my world because I work in theater and because I live in Santa Monica, California. I have a lot of faith and trust that these folks are well meaning and that they want to do better and learn more and have a really fun time doing it, and that’s what theater can do. So, I’m a little tough on my white folks at times, but I’m tough on them with all love and belief that they really do want to listen.

You’re also tough on your Native American characters. Why is that important to you that your Indigenous characters also be flawed?
There’s been a long history in American entertainment of this romanticized Native. We went from this savage, to the perfect mythological figure that can do no harm, to this medicine person, to this super cultural person, and all of these are not humanizing. They’re still othering us in different kinds of ways, so it was important to me to say here we are in all of our flaws. We’re passionate about things. We go too far about things. But also we have a different experience that we’re coming from because we’ve lived through a lot and we’re still dealing with a lot.

You have spoken about how The Thanksgiving Play was written in response to being told your plays were un-castable. Did you feel like because of that show, you could write more Native American roles?
For sure. Thanksgiving Play has earned me that trust that I can have quite a few Native actors. We’re fortunate we got to work in this production with a Tongva lead actress [Tonantzin Carmelo] in the role of Wynona. It’s exciting for us to have someone from the lands that this theater is built on because there’s never been a Native-written play in that theater. Honestly, I do think about economics and these folks have to sell 700 and some seats every night, and so writing a play that has characters that have that sort of general commercial appeal is a smart thing to do, and it only helps all of us. Now instead of having to write the all-white play like The Thanksgiving Play, I’m getting to write a play with a couple of white folks and four Native folks together and that’s actually a compromise I’m excited to be a part of.

You are the first female Native American playwright at the Mark Taper Forum, and you were the first on Broadway and a lot of other places. Do you feel like it’s a lot of pressure or are you happy to be that representation for people?
I’m certainly proud of it and I really take the honor seriously and try to make sure I use my privilege in the space to bring as many people with me and create as many opportunities as I can, but yeah, I definitely feel pressure. I don’t want to screw it up. I don’t want to be that one that everyone is like, “We worked with a Native playwright once. It was a nightmare.” Because I hear those stories, and they just say we’re not going to do Native work anymore. That’s certainly not the answer.

You wrote in the LA Times about how canceling your production and Cambodian Rock Band had done real damage to communities in Los Angeles. Do you feel like that wrong has been made right?
Honestly, CTG did an amazing job of reconciliation for that. They hired my consulting company Indigenous Direction to do a lot of training with the staff and the crew, and they also did an incredible amount of work with Indigenous communities.

When the wildfires started, did you worry that your production would be postponed again or that people wouldn’t want to go to the theater?
Yeah. It affected us directly. Cast members were evacuated. We had staffers who lost their homes and lost everything. It slowed down ticket sales a lot. Usually right before a show you have a pretty big bump in ticket sales, and we didn’t have the same bump because people were dealing with life and death stuff. We’re doing as much as we can to support. There’s never a bad time for comedy. There’s never a bad time for satire and farce. I think there’s never a bad time for theater, but this is especially a good time for this kind of work.