The Arizona Repertory Theatre opened its season with a couple of plays that will bring laughter and tears and shine a light on some shameful times in American history.
‘The Thanksgiving Play’
This biting satire by Larissa FastHorse, who belongs to the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is about a high school drama teacher, Logan (AJ Taylor), who wants to stage a historically accurate production about Thanksgiving. Helping her is her theater-hungry boyfriend, Jaxton (Max Murray), whose experience is limited to performing at the farmer’s market, and Caden (John Henry Stamper), an elementary school teacher on loan from another school to help.
Caden’s passion is history and he longs to have a play he’s written performed. Alicia (Alyssa DiRaimondo) is a beautiful, empty-headed actress who is ethnically fluid. Logan, thinking she is Native American (she had braids and wore turquoise in her headshot), hires her to be in the play. Logan is desperate for the input of an Indigenous person.
These four white folks are trying to devise a script that would honor the Native Americans. Caden is a stickler for facts, however, and he knows Thanksgiving was no cheerful sit-down-and-break-bread happening. He insists the script include the diseases, thievery, massacres and deceptions the Pilgrims wrought on Indigenous people.
This well-intentioned, earnest group tries to do the politically correct thing. In the process, they become so politically incorrect it is cringeworthy.
"The Thanksgiving Play" is a biting satire about a high school drama teacher who wants to stage a historically accurate production about Thanksgiving. Pictured are AJ Taylor, left and John Henry Stamper.
FastHorse tackles identity and who gets to tell the stories without ever lecturing, and she keeps you laughing throughout. This University of Arizona student cast, directed with a knowing eye by Randy Reinholz (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), bought into every bit of the story, living and breathing these outrageous characters.
There are also scenes with four ensemble members who sing Thanksgiving-tinged rhymes which were, FastHorse says in the script, “sadly inspired by the internet, mostly current teachers’ Pinterest boards.” Kinzie Pipkin, Addy Siciliano, Hannah McLaughlin and Riya Luthra were a stitch as they delivered the songs that are definitely not happy Thanksgiving tunes.
‘The Laramie Project’
The UA play opened Oct. 12, 25 years to the day since the murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay man who was beaten, strapped to a fence and left to die in the wide-open and isolated fields outside Laramie, Wyoming. His sexuality was the reason for such a heinous crime, perpetrated by two young men around his age.
Shortly after his death, which sent ripples around the world and gave strength to the idea of hate crimes legislation, Moisés Kaufman and the members of his Tectonic Theater Project set out for Laramie with the intent to interview residents about their reactions to the murder. They conducted more than 200 interviews to create the play and it gives voice to the homophobic residents of the town, as well as to the greater majority of people there who felt horror and deep compassion for what happened to Matthew.
Seamlessly directed by Greg Pierotti, one of the Tectonic members who conducted the interviews and co-wrote the play, “The Laramie Project” humanizes the town that became demonized after the murder. It was easy to paint Laramie with a wide hates-gays brush, but the play shows that the majority of the town is made up of pained, thoughtful and compassionate people.
The 11-member ensemble, all playing multiple roles, helped bring the town and its people to vivid life. It’s a mammoth play, weighty with an ugly truth about the treatment of fellow human beings. It’s likely that it was as emotional for the cast as it was for the audience.
Though Shepherd was killed in 1998, it took 11 years before the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was signed into law. It expanded the definition of hate crimes, providing more protection against crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity or sexual orientation. It hasn’t stopped hate crimes, but it makes punishment more severe.
“The Laramie Project” (two hours with one intermission) and “The Thanksgiving Play” (90 minutes with no intermission) continue through Oct. 22 at the Tornabene Theatre in the University of Arizona Fine Arts Complex, southeast corner of North Park Avenue and East Speedway. Tickets are $15-$32 at theatre.arizona.edu.
It is important to know the difference between a hate crime and a hate incident. A hate crime is a crime against a person, group, or property motivated by the victim’s social group.
