Larissa FastHorse

Playwrights debut. Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota) is an award-winning playwright, director, and choreographer.  Larissa’s produced plays include What Would Crazy Horse Do? (Kansas City Rep, Relative Theatrics), Urban Rez (Cornerstone Theater Company, NEFA National tour 2019-20), Landless and Cow Pie Bingo (AlterTheater), Average Family (Children’s Theater Company of Minneapolis), Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: A Class Presentation (Native Voices at the Autry), Vanishing Point (Eagle Project), and Cherokee Family Reunion (Mountainside Theater).  Larissa directed the critically acclaimed play, Our Voices Will Be Heard (Perseverance Theater Company) and is developing several new projects to direct with an emphasis on cross cultural community engaged work between Indigenous nations. Additional theaters that have commissioned or developed plays with Larissa include Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, The Lark, ASU Gammage, History Theater, Kennedy Center TYA, Baltimore’s Center Stage, Arizona Theater Company, Mixed Blood, the Center Theatre Group Writer’s Workshop and Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor.  Larissa was awarded the PEN USA Literary Award for Drama, NEA Distinguished New Play Development Grant, the UCLA Native American Program Woman of the Year, and numerous Ford, Mellon, and NEA Grants.  She is a current member of the Playwright’s Union, Director’s Lab West 2015, officer of the TCG Board of Directors and Playwright’s Center Core Writers.  As co-founder of Indigenous Direction with Ty Defoe, Larissa helps organizations plan and execute responsible engagements with Indigenous art, artists and audiences. www.hoganhorsestudio.com

• “The familiar, whitewashed story of Pilgrims and Native Americans chowing down together gets a delicious roasting from expert farceurs.”

  — Jesse Green, The New York Times

• “Very, very funny. Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play skewers liberal pretensions with glee – this clever satire is something for which to be truly thankful.”

  — Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter