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Larissa FastHorse(Sicangu Lakota Nation) is a writer/choreographer, and co-founder of Indigenous Direction, the nation's leading consulting company for Indigenous arts and audiences, which recently produced the first land acknowledgment on national television for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC. FastHorse is the first Native American playwright in the history of American theater to have a play on the top ten most-produced list, withThe Thanksgiving Play.The Thanksgiving Playwas the first play written by an Indigenous woman ever to be produced on Broadway. Additional produced plays includeWhat Would Crazy Horse Do?, Landless, Cow Pie Bingo, Average Family, Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: a Class Presentation, Vanishing Point,andCherokee Family Reunion(Mountainside Theater). FastHorse is the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur ""Genius"" Fellowship.
""Urban Rez, Native Nation, and the third work in the trilogy, slated for production in 2021 or 2022, are designed to be what FastHorse calls 'intentionally incompatible experiences' for non-Indigenous people. While she isn't actually trying to alienate white theatregoers, the trilogy's narratives avoid any pretense that they need or want a non-Indian stamp of approval. Instead, said FastHorse, these works are created by and for Indigenous people as a way for them to tell their stories the way they want them told."" --American Theatre Urban Rez: ""[Urban Rez] may be a story filled with struggle and sorrow but it's also a tale of resilience, passion, and (to state the obvious) love. I'll never forget my visit to the Urban Rez."" --LA Explorer ""For Urban Rez, company members join with nonprofessional actors representing 15 tribal nations to explore and humanize the cross-cultural challenges that go with being a truly native Southern Californian."" --Los Angeles Times Native Nation: ""While reflective of Indigenous life in Arizona, many of the issues addressed in Native Nation, as in Urban Rez, mirror broader concerns in Native country. The topics of environmental degradation, the violation of sacred lands, and the tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the U.S. and Canada are all addressed in Native Nation."" --American Theatre Wicoun: ""Through inside tribal jokes and powerful topics of rural life, the script evokes a clever, entertaining, and thought-provoking narrative that touches on kinship, Native superheroes, and the complicated dynamic of balancing white American heteronormative expectations and Oceti Sakowin cultural values."" --Studies in American Indian Literatures ""FastHorse's dense and wise ninety-minute comedy contains dozens of additional life lessons worthy of unpacking...Through a satirical comedy about Lakota superheroes, her wise words resonated throughout the sparsely populated territory of her native state, from the Black Hills across the Great Plains. If only her message of inclusion, generosity, and love could somehow carry further into the collective consciousness of our greedy and unreconciled nation."" --HowlRound
