(CHATHAM, NJ) -- Chatham Players present The Thanksgiving Play weekends from September 18 to October 3, 2026. Good intentions collide with absurd assumptions in Larissa FastHorse’s wickedly funny satire.
What does an ethical play about the first Thanksgiving look like? In this laugh 'til you cringe satire, journey with the four most well-meaning and misplaced white people you know as they explore their place in and responsibility to the First Thanksgiving narrative. Who knows? You might learn something along the way about history you'd rather not remember.
The cast includes Gabi Wagner Mann (Logan), Andrew Froehlich (Jaxton), Alan Ellis (Caden), and Giuliana Sammarro (Alicia).
The Production Team includes Director: Alysia Homminga; Producers: Jessica Phelan and Missy Renwick; Stage Manager: Sarah Pharaon; Assistant Stage Manager: Jordyn Chait; Set Design: Roy Pancirov; Lighting Design: Jackson Gould; Sound Design: Joe DeVico; Costume Design: Jackie Jacobi; Scenic Artist: Joëlle Bochner; Fight Coordinator: Steve Ruskin; and Makeup/Wigs: Alyson Pemoulié Halter.
Performances take place Friday and Saturday nights at 8:00pm and Sunday matinees at 3:00pm. Tickets are available for purchase online. The theater is located at 23 N Passaic Avenue in Chatham, New Jersey.
The Thanksgiving Play premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in New York City on October 12, 2018.
Playwright Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota Nation) is an award-winning writer and 2020-2025 MacArthur Fellow. Her satirical comedy The Thanksgiving Play made her the first known female Native American playwright on Broadway, at the Helen Hayes under the direction of Rachel Chavkin. Her new plays in 2023 are Wicoun (Cornerstone Theater Company), Democracy Project (Federal Hall), Fake It Until You Make It (CTG Mark Taper Forum), For the People (Guthrie), and the national tour of Peter Pan (Networks). Selected past plays include What Would Crazy Horse Do? (KCRep), Landless and Cow Pie Bingo (AlterTheater), Average Family (Children’s Theater Company of Minneapolis) and Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: a Class Presentation (Native Voices at the Autry), as well as numerous productions of The Thanksgiving Play, making it one of the most produced plays in America.
Larissa created the nationally recognized trilogy of community engaged theatrical experiences with Cornerstone Theater Company; Urban Rez, Native Nation and Wicoun. She and her collaborator, Michael John Garcés, spend years on each project in an Indigenized community engagement process. “The engagement itself is the art form.” These projects have earned them national funding and an appointment to Arizona State University's Department of English as professors of practice (literature).
Larissa’s company with Ty Defoe, Indigenous Direction, recently produced the first land acknowledgement on national television for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC and continues to consult for them. They also consult for the largest theater organizations in the country.
Larissa also writes in film and television, most recently as a creator for NBC, Disney Channel, Dreamworks, Muse, Netflix and others. She is based in Los Angeles with her husband, the sculptor Edd Hogan, and represented by Jonathan Mills at Paradigm NY. She is especially honored to follow in the footsteps of the last known Native American playwright on Broadway, Lynn Riggs.
