♪ I am honored to be the first, but I cannot be the last.

Mm.

And I will do everything in my ♪ Hi, I'm Lynne Marie Rosenberg.

Welcome to "Famous Cast Words."

I am joined today by writer, choreographer, advocate, consultant, and member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, Larissa FastHorse.

You might know Larissa from her Broadway hit "The Thanksgiving Play," or as the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the PEN America Laura Pels Theater Award for American playwrights, or for so many other fellowships and awards that I would be here all day to list them.

You might not know her as a dancer in the Disneyland stage show of "Pocahontas."

[ Laughs ] True.

I mean, first of all, [ Both laugh ] Thanks.

So, Larissa, I'm always grateful for any of my guests’ time, but yours in particular right now.

It feels like you are in a whirlwind of work and projects, which is, I'm sure, both wonderful and exhausting.

We'll start with "Thanksgiving Play" because it just recently closed on Broadway.

It was so wonderful.

I loved watching it.

And in case anyone has not seen it, what sort of does "Thanksgiving Play" deal with?

Yeah, so, "Thanksgiving Play" is about four self-described woke liberal white folks trying to create a culturally correct Thanksgiving play for children.

Yeah.

And they're I always say they're trying so hard to do it right that they do everything wrong.

[ Both laugh ] Yeah.

So, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is so wonderfully indicting and compassionate at the same time.

Where did that come from?

"The Thanksgiving Play" actually came in response to casting problems.

Yeah.

I had a lot of plays.

I've been writing plays for quite a while now, and I had so many plays that had... Like, I had one play that had one half Native American character, and I was told that it was uncastable by an artistic director.

Right.

And this was an artistic director in Arizona, by the way.

I've worked in Arizona with hundreds of Native actors that are amazing and talented, but that's what I was told.

And I kept being told that again and again, that my plays would only get the initial commission production, 'cause they'd already put some money into it and commitment into it, and then after that they wouldn't get done again.

And people kept saying it's because they were not castable because I had Native American characters in them.

And so that's where I conceived of writing a play that was all white-presenting people that still dealt with the same issues, as a challenge I gave to myself.

They still dealt with the same issues and all the same things I want to talk about as the contemporary Indigenous experience, but through white-presenting actors.

So, that's where it started.

Yeah.

Well, and I want to look at the word "white-presenting," 'cause there's a really lovely casting note in your script that specifically says "white passing," not -- it doesn't identify specifically white.

I wonder if you could talk a bit about why that language is there that way.

Yeah.

It's been -- It was really important to me because we still have some folks are playing redface.

Right.

And so non-Indigenous people, are being painted dark to play Native characters.

And it's still happening on our stages.

Not as prevalent as it was, but I do see it pop up more than you'd expect.

And so I was like, well, then it should be able to go the other way.

Interesting.

So Native people should be I don't know why not.

You know?

And so I very specifically said that people of color who can pass for white should be considered for all the roles.

And it's, you know, it's been good and bad.

In some ways, it's been fantastic.

I know a lot of Native American actresses have played Alicia.

Oh, cool.

And, you know, and got paid, of course.

On the other hand, it's been a real battle with Equity.

and I've really struggled because they suddenly are taking a hard line that you can't ask people to play what they aren't.

Right.

I was like, "But yet doing redface and yellowface and other things."

I have heard you speak about having contract language that specifically requires the hiring of Indigenous either performers and/or professionals, backstage professionals.

Could you talk a bit about how you established that language and why?

Yeah, I've actually not had to put it in contracts so far.

Oh!

So far, so good.

I just issue it as challenges.

Yeah.

I call them challenges.

In my plays, I challenge theaters that when they're producing my play in that season, I cannot be the only Indigenous person being paid.

Got it.

And I cannot be the only And they're very simple challenges.

But it's interesting how, um...

I'd say institution-changing they've been for a lot of theaters, which is really beautiful and gratifying.

Boy, that's got to feel good.

That is -- I mean, talk about using your work to build a platform for other people.

That has got to feel spectacular.

Yeah, I mean, that's the point of it to me, is, you know, the whole reason I do this is... Obviously I get to do my own work and my artistic expression, but as an Indigenous person, we're always thinking, especially as a Lakota person, seven generations ahead is what we're taught.

You know, that you should always think seven generations from now, what can I do that will affect that long?

So, it has to be a pretty large thing to last for seven generations.

Yeah.

You have to do Yeah.

[ Laughs ] And then it also has to be, though, always thinking so far in the future.

So, hopefully, in seven generations, it would be unthinkable for those folks to have the same challenges I've had as a Native artist.

There is a note in the Playbill that has started to appear since COVID reminding people how to be in an audience.

And, you know, as someone who has sat next to someone who's been on their phone the entire time on a Broadway show, in some ways I appreciated it.

And then in other ways, it felt pretty patronizing.

Mm-hmm.

And you had a post that I saw that I really quite liked, and I think Rachel Chavkin put it up as well, your director, crossing out the note and just saying, like, you know, "Be in this space the way that you want to be in this space."

So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about what made you decide to post that.

I really want a wide range of people to enjoy my plays, and I'm endlessly surprised at how much American theater doesn't realize that what things like this Playbill letter are doing is reinforcing a very specific culture, and that's white culture.

Mm.

And that's why things like that bother me.

Certainly there are things in there that, like, yes, be nice to those ushers.

I'm very close to my front-of-house folks, so absolutely be kind to people.

But that should just be be kind to everybody.

[ Both laugh ] Um, frankly.

But also when it goes beyond that, it was -- sounded so patronizing in the way, tone it was written.

And the last thing I want you to do is be quiet.

Yeah.

Be loud, talk back.

You know, talk to each other, like, have a conversation.

Like, if you're so moved by theater that you can't just sit there silently, we won, right?

That's right.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what we should be, like, dreaming of and aiming for.

And instead we're saying, "Don't do that.

Be silent.

Sit there quietly."

That's not how all cultures in this continent express themselves.

That's not how all cultures in this continent engage in a group experience or how they like to engage with art.

My number-one rule, as I wrote in the post, is be a human.

Like, you shouldn't have to stop being a human to show up in theater.

That's just wild.

Yeah.

You know, you know, no announcements about cellphones.

They have the little sign.

Fine.

You can have the little sign, but don't yell at people right before you start a comedy.

Yeah.

That's the worst way to start Yeah, yeah.

And you know, Right.

People's cellphones That's right.

No matter So, whatever.

Let people be a human.

Because this show is about representation and inclusion, a lot of people who wind up on it are a "first" of some kind.

In your case, the first Indigenous woman to have a play produced on Broadway, and I think there's a double-edged sword with that.

And one is that it's incredible to have this title, and the other is it is so frustrating to have this title, right?

That we're not further along in 2023.

And I wonder if you could talk a bit about what it means to be a first.

Yeah, I'm very privileged that I am the first in I'd say 90% of the spaces I work in.

Right.

[ Laughs ] So, you know, I'm...

It's a privilege and an honor, and I take it very seriously.

I take very seriously the responsibility to make sure that the door is, like, held wide open.

I always say I'm honored to be the first, but I cannot be the last.

Mm.

And I will do everything in my I work with my theater companies.

I do -- I make them do trainings with me that I call Indian 101 and do cultural competency trainings and trainings to prepare them for other artists in the ways different Indigenous people can enter the space, and the reasons they aren't entering the space.

And, you know, I do a lot of that, which honestly, you know, is a lot of work and a lot of time.

It's free labor that I do.

But again, you know, I have the honor of being the first, so I have to make sure that it -- seven generations down the line, it seems ridiculous that there would not have been Native people in that space.

I mean, at the same time, yes, you know -- you know, "Wah wah, poor me."

But it is, it is...

It's hard.

It's exhausting.

It's labor.

It's very real labor, yeah.

I saw a bunch of my friends -- you know, James Ijames was posting pictures from the, like, I don't know, Black people on Broadway party, dinner party or something.

I was like...

I was going to, like, post pictures of me, like, eating dinner.

[ Laughs ] Yeah, yeah.

Like, "I had one, too."

"Here's all the Indigenous writers on Broadway, hey!"

[ Both laugh ] But, you know, it's true.

I mean, there's just me.

♪ So, you went straight from Broadway to a very, very different theater-making, storytelling modality.

I wonder if you could tell us a bit about "Wicoun," which is the show that you just finished in South Dakota.

Yeah.

So "Wicoun," we just finished.

We toured South and just a little bit of North Dakota, made it to Standing Rock.

[ Both laugh ] That's it.

We would have loved to do more, but we just didn't have enough budget.

But it's the third of a series of plays I've done with Cornerstone Theater Company and my 10-year collaborator Michael John Garcés.

He and I have been creating these plays in Indigenous communities together through Cornerstone.

And we finally got to go to my homelands and worked with the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota people, across the entire Oceti Sakowin Nation.

And so, in that tour, we ended up topping 3,000 miles of driving.

Oh, my God.

[ Laughs ] And we were performing in, you know, community centers, out on the prairie, literally on the prairie, powwow grounds, gymnasiums.

So, we spent five years asking people what they wanted us to write about, and what we ended up writing about was, interestingly, Lakota superheroes, and specifically this superhero gains their power when they transition.

They were interested in transitioning from female to male, and finally, through Lakota culture and through our traditions, by making that transition, were finally able to own all of their powers, which we personified as superpowers, and became a superhero.

Boy, I knew it was about superheroes.

I did not know that.

That is lovely.

And now I really want to see that.

And it comes directly from our culture.

You know, our culture always said that those who possess both winyan and wicasa, which is masculine and feminine, they were the holiest of the holy.

They had more power than anybody 'cause they had the power of both, you know, and they were brought together into their own form, and they were considered spiritual people.

Yeah.

That...

It's interesting.

There's sort of like the two worlds -- you going back and forth between Broadway and then this work.

Yeah.

You grew up in a border town, right?

There's something that seems to be thematic of, like, living between spaces and moving between spaces for you, and even the work that you do and platforms you create for other people.

Absolutely.

I mean, I started on a border town, then we ended up moving to the capitol, Pierre, but I was adopted by a white family.

Right.

So what was difficult being sometimes not enough anything, you know?

I understand it well, yeah.

Not being white, not being Native, not being all, you know -- is now my strength, right?

That I'm a bridge.

I'm a bridge between cultures.

I'm a bridge between different ways of seeing things.

I can interpret for each side.

I can do Broadway and I can perform in the prairie.

[ Laughs ] Yeah, "I can do Broadway and I can perform in the prairie."

There's no better sentence than that.

I hope that's the name of your memoir you write someday.

Now we're going to look at some breakdown language.

Now, Larissa, of course you have experience with breakdowns from both sides of the casting table.

But for anyone at home, this is just a reminder that breakdowns are a little bit of text that are used in film, theater, television, and commercials to help with casting.

In your case, Larissa, I wanted to look at what sort of language reappears for Indigenous characters.

You may not be surprised to hear, given the lack of representation, that the words Indigenous or Native appear most frequently when lumped in with other ethnicities specified in a breakdown, and not for specifically Indigenous characters.

However, there are some Indigenous-specific breakdowns, and they seem to share some redundant commonalities.

For starters, the character names leave a lot to be desired, ranging from the incredibly vague to the problematically specific.

"Man 2," "Desert Man," and "Village People Indigenous Guy."

Mm-hmm.

Of course.

Right.

[ Laughing ] That makes sense.

But the good news is, age doesn't really seem to matter.

Indigenous Man can be 50 to 80.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, wow.

And Uncle Pleasant, 30 to 70 years old.

Wow.

That's amazing.

So you can play yourself and your grandparents.

That's right.

Actually, like, three generations.

That's amazing.

I love it.

Your special skills will be vitally important -- or at least a couple choice ones.

Oh, yeah.

I'm sure they're great.

"Please note if you can ride a horse in the submission."

Of course.

"This role requires a lot of horseback riding and the use of weapons."

[ Laughing ] Oh, of course.

"A good horseman, hunter, and fighter."

They're gonna actually hunt?

Are they gonna hunt onstage?

Is that what they're gonna do?

Are they gonna go and bring back a deer for the crew?

Um, okay.

Sorry.

That's immersive.

"This requires expert horseback riding skills, carrying firearms, spears" -- ooh!

-- "and other weapons."

Amazing.

And the only thing more one-noted than the talents needed are the emotions expressed.

Oh, let's see.

"Stern, heavily into the tradition."

The tradition?

The tradition.

The tradition.

Just that one.

That one tradition, they're really into it.

"Serious, spiritual, commanding presence with gravitas."

Mm-hmm.

Wow.

That's amazing.

And, "A deeply religious man obsessed with weaponry."

[ Laughing ] Oh, there are those special skills again!

[ Both laugh ] That's amazing.

If we're talk-- If we're talking about Sitting Bull, that would work.

That's right.

If that's the only role we're ever talking about.

Yeah, yeah, or maybe Crazy Horse.

And lastly, you may have noticed the language we just looked at was largely gendered male.

Of course.

And that's because between of around 30 roles that came up in a search specifically for Indigenous characters, none were two-spirit or non-binary, only 10 were female-identifying, and of those 10, two were for the problematic ensemble roles in the traditional productions of "Peter Pan."

Ah.

It seems the only thing more erased than Indigenous characters is non-male Indigenous characters.

But just in case you wanted to get back into performing, Larissa, here's one more role to remind you what quality work is waiting for you back in the pool for women our age, regardless of cultural heritage.

Oh, God.

"Lucy.

40 to 50 years old.

A high-end sex worker quickly aging out of the profession."

Okay, first off, she's 50, and she's just now aging out of the profession?

Well, I mean, she's good at what she does.

But also, wow.

Yeah, we haven't...

I once had to go audition for, like, I think it was Poca-Hottie.

Like, which is like, now also a Halloween thing.

Oh, Poca-Hottie.

Yeah.

Oh!

Which is now but it was for a -- like, some comedy movie.

And I was so angry, and the whole thing was just ridiculous.

So I sat through that whole waiting room.

I waited.

It took me like...

I had to get all the way across town in LA.

I had to park.

I sat in this waiting room.

I wore something a little bit hot so I wouldn't get kicked out.

I waded through all the people and I went in and I told them how incredibly racist this was.

That's great!

Yeah!

I just spent all my time, like, telling them.

They're like, "Well, are we gonna audition?"

I was like, "No, but I've got 20 minutes and I'm gonna tell you..." And I explained to them for 20 minutes how racist this thing was.

I mean.... How offensive it was.

[ Laughing ] I think that's phenomenal because I always tell people, I'm like -- Clearly, I was not gonna be a successful actress.

No, but, like -- but what service did you do in that day?

Yeah.

I mean, that is so great.

if you're gonna say no, tell them why you're saying no.

They have to know why you're saying no to this, yeah.

And then the next girl comes in in her, like, bikini top and just like...

Right.

[ Laughs ] Negates everything that you -- Yeah, yeah.

[ Both laugh ] But, you know, whatever.

The thing that kills me about the "stern" and "gravitas" and... is, you talk so beautifully about how comedy and laughing is so important to you.

I wonder if you could talk about how off-the-mark this sort of repeated language for Indigenous characters might be.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's interesting 'cause before I had been saying, that this grandma had said to me like, "You know, Larissa, you know, we have to laugh or we're gonna cry.

You know, this is... We've survived all this.

You know, it's made us resilient.

We laugh about it.

That's how we survive."

And then recently, actually, while I was doing an interview, I think, for "The Thanksgiving Play," I heard then from a Native grandmother who -- who had said to me, "Larissa, stop giving them credit."

Said comedy is Indigenous culture.

We are -- That's at the core of our culture.

That's ours.

And humor and laughter, like, that's always been ours.

Don't give credit to them that their oppression created that.

Yeah.

That's ours.

And we used it to deal with their oppression.

It's a tool we use, but it's not theirs.

So, you're working on a new script of "Peter Pan," the sort of beloved "Peter Pan" that has some really problematic aspects to it.

Can you tell us about that project and how you've been reworking the script?

Yeah.

So, Lonny Price is directing this, and he asked me to come on board, he and the producers, to make it not racist and not offensive.

So, obviously we had to change, you know, how it's presented as far as Indigenous people and women.

Oh, yeah.

You know, there's a horrific where it talks about how her whole tribe wants her to bed, and she only survives because she can fight them off, and she's so skilled with weapons that she can fight off all these men.

And we're just promoting rape culture to young girls.

And this is the script that young children read in schools all the time.

And we're telling them, you know, it's alright -- as long as she can fight you off, then, oh, well, she "won."

And you know, but eventually you will win 'cause you're gonna fight hard enough that she will, you know, like... Oy vey.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's what we let children read all these years.

It's horrifying.

Well, and not just misogyny, but specifically Indigenous misogyny, right?

Yeah.

That, like, these are these And it's rape culture, right?

So, you know, so we've corrected that no one has to play redface anymore in this show and we've corrected -- Wendy and Tiger Lily speak to each other without Peter.

What?!

[ Both laugh ] They talk about things in their life, and she gets to, you know, do things, and... She gets a voice.

Yeah.

And Tiger Lily is now the chief of her tribe and no longer a daughter of a chief.

And it actually requires now a multi-ethnic ensemble in the way that I've reconceived the tribe and how they work, so that people don't have to play redface.

So, yeah.

That's great.

So, Larissa, now we're going to step away from this beautiful couch, and we're going to go take a look at your special skills.

[ Both laugh ] ♪ I feel like we're in school.

I know.

[ Laughs ] We have arrived at Special Skills.

Of course, at the bottom of every actor's résumé, there is a section called Special Skills where they list their talents and skills.

But something else that we often list in our casting profiles is wardrobe that we have available.

So today we're gonna do a little tour of your jewelry.

Yes.

You wear And I'm so excited to hear about sort of the meaning and derivation of all these pieces that you have.

Great.

I'm excited.

Yeah.

Yeah, because we quickly learned I have no special skills.

No!

[ Both laugh ] I'm sure you have all sorts of special skills.

So, let's see.

We'll start on this end.

Yeah.

So, these were beaded by one of the crew members, actually, in "Wicoun" and then given to me at the end as a thank-you gift.

Beautiful.

Her name is These I do not, unfortunately, at the moment remember the name of the artist.

I've had them quite a while.

But I just, I love a big hoop.

And so to find -- I love a big hoop.

To find a big hoop that had, you know, this kind of beading all the way around it, to me, was really gorgeous and exciting.

It's a very traditional Lakota pattern.

So this color pattern and this, that is... Yeah, that's most likely Lakota.

And then these were recently a gift to me.

They're done by an artist named Lorri Ann Two Bulls.

Her whole family are artists.

These are sisters.

And they're meant to be obviously worn together.

These look different.

These are unusual.

I know, people are like...

I'm vocally a pacifist.

So people are like, "Why do you wear dog tags?"

Right.

So, these particular dog tags, a young man that I worked with as a dancer when I was choreographing at Cherokee, North Carolina, and their big outdoor show Unto These Hills, and he went into the military, into the Marines.

He was there during Desert Storm and a lot of the wars in the Middle East.

And when he survived and came out, he felt that he needed to find a way that meant something to him personally, to reconnect with his culture and to be -- say he's home.

And so he had these dog tags made, and they have his Indigenous name, his clans, and his nations on here.

Oh, wow.

And he always wore them.

And, one of our last rehearsals before we opened the show, he took these off and put them on me and thanked me.

I have chills.

That is an incredible gift.

Yeah, so I wear these with a lot of respect and honor.

This one is very special to me.

Yeah, this one we'll have to get a close-up of 'cause there's little Playbill covers on the inside here.

Yeah, so these are Playbill covers from "The Thanksgiving Play."

Oh, my gosh.

They were commissioned for me by Vera Starbard Bedard, who is a Tlingit writer that I've worked with for a lot of years.

And she commissioned them from a Tlingit artist to create these from the little Playbills.

And so she made the earrings for me, and then all my cast members got a pin.

It's so lovely.

Yeah.

It's so sweet.

I love them.

You mentioned that you travel with this.

What does it mean for you to have this work with you?

Oh, everything.

Yeah.

I mean, like, because I live, you know, the majority of my life on the road, it is me bringing home with me and bringing my family and my friends with me everywhere I go.

Yeah.

So I think of them What are you excited about what is happening in the world right now as far as representation and inclusion goes?

And then what are you still really frustrated by?

Mm.

I'm excited that we are seeing such an incredible breadth of identity in casting.

I think, you know, it's interesting.

I'm in the middle of casting for a very commercial project right now, and immediately, not me, but others came forward and said, "Oh, is there a reason we're putting two genders on these roles?"

And I was like, "No.

Why are we adding genders?"

"Why are we adding races?"

You know, like, and taking those things out was really helpful.

I think we're seeing a lot of positive specificity also, as far as people of different ethnicities and not just saying "Asian."

Right, right.

[ Laughs ] That perhaps you need a Japanese person for this role.

That's right.

There is a, like, you know, two sides of that, right?

Japanese folks are thrilled that finally a Japanese person is playing a Japanese role, where then also other Asian folks are like, "Yeah, but now there's only like this many people that can fit that slot."

Right.

And is that better or worse?

I don't know.

I think what we need to get to is where there's plenty of roles for everybody to do everything.

And then we'll all feel much better about being able to then get really specific.

Yeah, I think it's such a trap of siloing in that way.

Even with this show, obviously we want to make sure that we're covering lots of different ways of being in the world, ways of being in theater or being in film and television, and then you wind up doing the thing you don't want to do, which is saying, "Well, we can't have another X, because we had them in the last season."

And that's -- that's infuriating to have to do.

And then you're back in the same cycle.

For sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know, we're still in that.

I mean, it happens to me all the time in theater still, is like, "Oh, we already have a writer of color this season."

[ Laughs ] Or, you know, after 2020 and the tragic murder of George Floyd, my play was replaced in a lot of theaters with a Black writer's play, because we had to have one or the other.

And I know, like, that playwright would be horrified if they knew that, and wouldn't support that.

But it was amazing how many theaters, 'cause they still are like, "We can have one."

You can only have one.

One writer of color.

So now we're no longer doing "The Thanksgiving Play," and we're putting in a Black writer.

Oy vey.

Because that fixes -- That's what this was all about.

[ Laughing ] It's just switching, swapping out.

Right.

It's like, no, And imagine if we said, "Well, how many dead white men can you have this season?"

Yeah, right?

I know.

Yeah.

So, it's wild.

Larissa, thank you so much for sharing your compassion and kindness and spirit with me today.

Thank you at home for watching.

Take care of each other and be professional.

♪ ♪ ♪

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