Thursday, November 23, 2023
Playwright 'Larissa FastHorse' on 'The Thanksgiving Play' and the Macy's parade
NPR: The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has been getting some updates. Four years ago, Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse and her creative partner Ty Defoe began consulting with parade organizers to make the annual event "less harmful" to Indigenous people. The first order of business was to get rid of the pilgrims.
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The annual Macy’s thanksgiving day parade is always the subject of both fake outrage and extremely valid criticism, as well as the site of some of the most meaningful discussions surrounding the intersection of indigenous people and symbols of land ownership and oppression. Through her plays, Larissa FastHorse tries to deal with the contemporary Indigenous experience and what it’s like to live as an Indigenous person in primarily white spaces. The annual thanksgiving parade has undergone changes in recent years to be better with regards to the Lenape people, and now makes land acknowledgements to recognize the original stewards of the land. I love Larissa FastHorse’s ideas on getting funding, and it's just about putting yourself in spaces, and by your presence, forcing people to reconcile what they believe about you with who you are. She says “[Funders] wanted me to do "Native American" work. I was like, "Well, it is. If I'm doing it, it's Native American work.”
Larissa Fasthorse makes a great point: making these changes does not hurt anyone but only makes it more inclusive and less harmful for future generations. It doesn’t erase any of the discrimination or pain from previous decades of the parade and holiday. I’m very interested to see the adaptation that Fasthorse has written for Peter Pan and I hope it goes to Broadway with Disney’s support. It’s wonderful she is keeping the magic and reimagining what a more inclusive Neverland looks like. While in high school, I worked at a children's theatre summer camp. The younger group, all elementary students of which 90-95% of which are white, was putting on Peter Pan Jr and the directors cast a white blonde girl as Tiger Lily. One day all the kids at the “after camp” program wanted to watch Peter Pan. I remember having to explain to them that there are large parts of Peter Pan that are racist and that we don’t say these things to other people because it is mean.
I think the topic and holiday, and the traditions and mindsets that go along with it are a really hot topic conversation at the moment. It is always why I love reading articles like this because, I personally know very few indigenous people and I find it necessary to educate myself on what is an extremely important viewpoint and experience that they bring to this discussion around thanksgiving. I think it is extremely valuable for productions to consult and have diverse teams within their productions, especially if it is something as televised and popular as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. I love the simple changes that were made to the parade to be a little more respectful and inclusive. Like Larissa Fast horse says in the interview, the land acknowledgement read at the beginning of the parade didn’t hurt anyone and all 60 million people still watched it. Also, I personally think that the turkey looks better in a top hat and bow tie lol, but that's just me.
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