by Larissa FastHorse
NOV 27 & 28 LIVESTREAMING
Generously sponsored by Marcia & Donald Liebich
PRESENTS
by Larissa FastHorse DIRECTED BY: CLAUDIA MCCAIN & ANDREW ALBURGER The running time for The Thanksgiving Play is approximately 90 minutes. There is no intermission. “The Thanksgiving Play” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. www.concordtheatricals.com Production Credits: Playwrights Horizons, Inc., New York City, produced the world Premiere of “THE THANKSGIVING PLAY” In 2018 “THE THANKSGIVING PLAY” was commissioned and originally produced by Artists Repertory Theatre, Damaso Rodriguez, Artistic Director and Sarah Horton, Managing Director Portland, Oregon” “THE THANKSGIVING PLAY” Playwrights Horizons is dedicated to cultivating the most important American playwrights, composers, and lyricists, as well as developing and producing their bold new plays and musicals. Tim Sanford became Artistic Director in 1996 and Leslie Marcus has been Managing Director since 1993. Under their decades of leadership, Playwrights builds upon its diverse and renowned body of work, counting 400 writers among its artistic roster. In addition to its onstage work each season, Playwrights’ singular commitment to nurturing American theater artists guides all of the institution’s multifaceted initiatives: our acclaimed New Works Lab, a robust commissioning program, an innovative curriculum at its Theater School, and more. Robert Moss founded Playwrights in 1971 and cemented the mission that continues to guide the institution today. André Bishop served as Artistic Director from 1981-1992. Don Scardino succeeded him and served until 1996. Over its 47-year history, Playwrights has been recognized with numerous awards and honors, including six Pulitzer Prizes, 13 Tony Awards, and 39 Obie Awards.
“THE THANKSGIVING PLAY” IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY MARCIA & DONALD LIEBICH COMPANY OF FOOLS 25TH SEASON SPONSORS
Arrow R Storage, Gwen and Mitchel August, Blaine County Title, Linda and Bob Edwards, Jodie and Dan Hunt and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation, Kenneth Lewis, Marcia and Donald Liebich, Linda and Bill Nicholson, Tedde and Jim Reid, Shubert Foundation, Richard Smooke and Family in loving memory of Judith Smooke, Julie Weston and Gerry Morrison, Jeri Wolfson, and Barbara and Stanley Zax
SPECIAL THANKS: Buffalo Electric, Cathy Reinheimer of Wet Lab Productions and Steve Holzman/The Meriwether Building.
About the Playwright LARISSA FASTHORSE (Sicangu Lakota) is an award-winning writer.
Larissa’s produced plays include The Thanksgiving Play (Playwrights Horizons); What Would Crazy Horse Do? (Kansas City Repertory Theatre); Urban Rez/Native Nation / Lakota Project Trilogy in collaboration with Michel John Garcés (Cornerstone Theater Company, ASU Gammage); 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); Cherokee Family Reunion (Mountainside Theater). Additional theaters that have commissioned or developed plays with Larissa include Yale Rep, Guthrie, Geffen Playhouse, History Theater, Kennedy Center TYA, Baltimore’s Center Stage, Arizona Theater Company, Mixed Blood, Perseverance Theater Company, The Lark Playwrights Week, the Center Theatre Group Writer’s Workshop and Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor. Larissa’s awards include the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award for an American Playwright, NEA Distinguished New Play Development Grant, Joe Dowling Annamaghkerrig Fellowship, AATE Distinguished Play Award, Inge Residency, Sundance/Ford Foundation Fellowship, Aurand Harris Fellowship, the UCLA Native American Program Woman of the Year, and numerous Creative Capital, MAP Fund, Ford, Mellon, and NEA Grants. Larissa is the vice chair of the board of directors of Theater Communications Group and represented by Jonathan Mills at Paradigm Talent Agency. In October 2020, Ms. FastHorse received the prestigious “Genius Grant” from the Macarthur Foundation. She lives in Santa Monica with her husband, the sculptor Edd Hogan. hoganhorsestudio.com #thethanksgivingplay Pronouns: She/Her
The familiar, whitewashed story of Pilgrims and Native Americans chowing down together gets a delicious roasting from expert farceurs.
A satirical and visual punch. —New York Stage Review
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. —Hollywood Reporter
—The New York Times
About the Play “THE THANKSGIVING PLAY”
A group of mismatched teachers and actors have been charged by the school district to devise an ethnically sensitive play to somehow celebrate both Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Month. In order to be as respectful and accurate as possible, the three white actors defer to the only Native American in the room for guidance and find their expectations of her insights are wildly misguided. In this wickedly funny satire, this foursome must find their way through a hilarious thicket of assumptions, historical perspectives and school district policies as the absurd pageant must go on!
Creative Team Co-Director.................................... CLAUDIA MCCAIN Co-Director..................................ANDREW ALBURGER Stage Manager..............................CHRIS HENDERSON Stage Direction Reader...........ANDREW ALBURGER Camera #1................................................. TESS MAKENA Camera #2......................................... MATT MUSGROVE
Light Board Operator............................ JACKIE COLE Sound Board Operator ............CHRIS HENDERSON Technical Director......................PATRICK SZCZOTKA Facilitator.......................................... RANDY REINHOLZ Company Manager................................. KRIS OLENICK
Cast Logan........................... MELODIE TAYLOR-MAULDIN Jaxton........................................................ JOEL VILINSKY Alicia............................................................... ALY WEPPLO
Caden................................................CHRIS CARWITHEN Understudy for Alicia & Logan........ CHRISTINE LESLIE
About the Artists CLAUDIA MCCAIN (Co-Director) Is beyond happy to be back in the theatre with this funny, thought-provoking play and working with wonderful friends. Best known as an actor, she most recently appeared in the CoF production of The Niceties. Directing credits include for CoF: A Body of Water, The Diary of Anne Frank (staged reading), and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (reading). For Laughing Stock: The Sound of Music. For New Theatre Co.: This Day and Age. Two self-produced plays: The Belle of Amherst and Four Stories, One Woman. A local arts advocate, Claudia serves on the boards of the Ketchum Arts Commission, and the SUN Airport Arts committee, as well as serving on the Task Force for CoF. Thanks to Kris, Patrick, Andrew and our great cast and crew!
Frog & Toad), Uncle Charlie (August: Osage County), Ziggy (Sideman), and Clown#1 (The 39 Steps). Directing credits include readings of Tiny Beautiful Things, Bright New Boise, I Hate Hamlet and The Heidi Chronicles. Andrew teaches an Improv class in Hailey and can be seen singing and playing guitar at several venues in town including Divine Wine Bar. So grateful and excited to be back at the Liberty Theatre again, doing theatre with such talented friends. Here’s to many, many more!
CHRIS CARWITHEN (Caden) is a resident company artist with Company of Fools. Since his Liberty Theatre debut in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Chris has had the pleasure of performing on the John C. Glenn stage in productions such as Good People, A Year with Frog and Toad, Almost, Maine, Grey Gardens, ART, Life Sucks, Striking 12, Clybourne Park,and Woody Guthrie’s American Song. A theatre arts graduate ANDREW ALBURGER (Co-Director) has been a core from Southern Oregon University, Chris has been company artist with CoF since involved with a number of professional companies 2001. He has appeared in over including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the 5th Avenue in Seattle, the Oregon Cabaret Theatre, 50 productions, readings and ArtsWest, and The Shedd Institute. other performances. Favorite roles include Toad (A Year with
MELODIE TAYLOR-MAULDIN (Logan) a graduate in Music/ Dance/Theater from Weber State University, is a versatile actor, singer, choreographer, and director. Work includes The Glenn Miller Big Band Show (performer, costume designer, choreographer), South Pacific, Oklahoma, 42nd Street, Quilters, Opera Idaho’s Jacques Brel (choreographer), Musical Theater West’s Little Women (director), Company of Fool’s A Year With Frog & Toad and A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine (choreography, Mrs. Pavlenko), St. Thomas Playhouse’s The King and I (Anna) and My Fair Lady (Eliza), Sun Valley’s Classic Christmas Concert (producer, director, performer, choreographer). An active educator, she works with children of all ages and is a Footlight Dance Centre faculty member. JOEL VILINSKY (Jaxton), a founding CoF member since its 1992 Richmond, Virginia, inception, was last seen as Mitchell in Cry It Out. Favorite CoF roles include: Mike in Good People, Gordon in Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Hannay in The 39 Steps, Howie in Rabbit Hole, Harold in K2, Jonathan in Sight Unseen, Gabe in Dinner with Friends, Gabriel in James Joyce’s The Dead, and Danny in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. Joel also mentored for CoF’s New Voices, directed Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter, and served as editor/director and co-contributor for CoF’s production of original writings, Dinners with Friends. Grateful thanks to Jeanne, my compass whose heart is always in the right place. ALY WEPPLO (Alicia) is an actor, librarian, crafter, navy brat, and seven-time aunt. Born in California, moved to Rhode Island, and mostly raised in Virginia, she discovered Idaho was the best place of all and moved here in 2015. You may have seen Aly in Crimes of the Heart or Edward Tulane at Company of Fools, as Rosemary in Sawtooth Productions’ Outside Mullingar at the Argyros, as Loud Stone in
Eurydice at The Spot, and as Gertrude in Seussical with St. Thomas Playhouse. While sheltering in place, Aly has taken up dressmaking and long neighborhood walks. She just finished her Master’s in Library Science, so she’s on the hunt for a new project. And she wishes you health and happiness. RANDY REINHOLZ (Choctaw), is Founder and Producing Artistic Director Emeritus of Native Voices at the Autry. A producer, director, actor, and playwright, with over 100 productions in the United States, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and Mexico. Reinholz received ATHE’s Ellen Stewart Career Achievement in Professional Theatre Award, also recognized with Playwrights’ Arena’s Lee Melville Award for outstanding contributions to Los Angeles theatre. Reinholz has also received: Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, MAP Grant, McKnight Fellowship, and multiyear support from the NEA, Ford Foundation, Shubert Foundation, City of LA Cultural Affairs, Disney, Sony, and LA County Arts Commission. A professor at San Diego State University since 1997, he has served as Head of Acting, Director of the School of Theatre, Television, and Film, and Director of Community Engagement and Innovation. CHRISTINE LESLIE (Understudy for Alicia & Logan) is ecstatic to be a company artist with Company of Fools. She currently teaches Drama and directs and produces theater performances at Wood River Middle School with 6th–8th graders. She also co-directs many high school plays with Karl Nordstrom and the WRHS theater department. Her first play with Company of Fools was The Laramie Project in 2003. Since then she has performed in several productions and readings as well as working behind the scenes with the stage crew, and teaching Stages of Wonder at the local elementary schools. Christine appreciates all aspects of theater and has written scenes and plays that her students have performed. “It is a true gift to see your creation come to life.” Christine is forever thankful to all those who inspire her, especially her family, friends, students, and the dear “Fools.”
Interesting Facts DID YOU KNOW? • According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 4.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives in the United States today. That’s about 1.5 percent of the population. • November is Native American Heritage Month. The month is a time to celebrate rich and diverse cultures, traditions, and histories and to acknowledge the important contributions of Native people. • Thanksgiving wasn’t established as a national holiday in America until 1863, during the Civil War. • The National Day of Mourning is an annual protest organized since 1970 by Native Americans of New England on the fourth Thursday of November, the same day as Thanksgiving in the United States. It coincides with a separate, similar protest and counter-celebration, Unthanksgiving Day, held on the West Coast. • Tribal sovereignty refers to the right of American Indians and Alaska Natives to govern themselves. The U.S. Constitution recognizes Indian tribes as distinct governments and they have, with a few exceptions, the same powers as federal and state governments to regulate their internal affairs. • Not until 1924 were all Native Americans granted citizenship. Native Americans have been allowed to vote in national elections since 1924; however, until recently some states prohibited Native Americans from voting in local elections. New Mexico, for example, did not extend the vote to Native Americans until 1962. • Even though they were not U.S. citizens, over 8,000 Native Americans served during WWI. • A code talker is the name given to Native Americans who used their tribal language to send secret communications on the battlefield. During WWI, some of the Choctaw soldiers were overheard speaking their Native language. An officer had a brainstorm to train the Choctaws to use their language as “code.” These code talkers were placed strategically on front lines and at command posts so that messages could be transmitted without being understood by the enemy. Members of many Tribal Nations also served with distinction using Native languages in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Among these brave warriors were the famed World War II Wind Talkers of the Navajo Nation. The one unbreakable code turned out to be a natural language whose phonetic and grammatical structure was so different from the languages familiar to the enemy that it was almost impossible to transcribe much less translate. The Navajo code is the only spoken military code never to have been deciphered. • The Nez Perce people helped Lewis and Clark explore the Northwest Territory. They built canoes for them, drew maps of the rivers, and helped them reach the Pacific. • Sacagawea (1788–1812) was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who helped the Lewis and Clark expedition as an interpreter and a guide. She traveled thousands of miles with them, from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, between 1804 and 1806. • American Indians and Alaska Natives born today have a life expectancy that is 4.4 years lower than the United States’ all races population, and they continue to die at higher rates than other Americans in many categories of preventable illness, including chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, diabetes, and chronic lower respiratory diseases.
• The Indian Health Service (IHS)—an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—provides care to over 2.2 million Native Americans across the country. Although IHS fulfills treaty responsibilities to provide health care for members of more than 560 recognized tribes, Congress has consistently underfunded the agency, forcing hospital administrators to limit the services offered. As a result, tribal members have a different health care reality than many other U.S. citizens. For example, funding would have to nearly double to match the level of care provided to federal prisoners, according to an analysis by the National Congress of American Indians. Funding would need to be even higher to match the benefits guaranteed by programs such as Medicaid. • In 1990, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe opened the Benewah Medical Center, now known as Marimn Health in Plummer, Idaho. Marmin Health provides superior services to the medically underserved on a sliding fee basis and makes a commitment to provide healthcare services for all people in their community, Native and non-Native. • From kayaks to contraceptives to pain relievers, Native Americans developed key innovations long before Columbus reached the Americas. Learn more at www.history.com/news/native-american-inventions
Company of Fools is a proud member of the National New Play Network, Theatre Communications Group, the National Association of Professional Theatres, and Theatre Development Fund’s Autism-Friendly Theatre Network. * Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
Company of Fools is a proud member of Blue Star Theatres, a program of the Blue Star Families and Theatre Communications Group offering discounted tickets to U.S. military personnel, National Guard members, veterans of the armed services, first responders and their immediate families.
Thank you. YOUR SUPPORT MAKES THIS COMMUNITY STRONGER.
svmoa.org | 208.726.9491