RED BARN’S “THE THANKSGIVING PLAY” TAKES A HILARIOUS ‘WOKE’ LOOK AT OUR ICONIC HISTORY

RED BARN’S “THE THANKSGIVING PLAY” TAKES A HILARIOUS ‘WOKE’ LOOK AT OUR ICONIC HISTORY

We hear a lot about “wokeness” in the heady world of national politics these days. It’s usually pretty serious stuff, with each side slamming the other for either having too much of it, or not having enough. But what happens when you bring that thorny issue down to the common earth of everyday people?

Well, we’re about to find out in a very funny way when Key West’s Red Barn Theatre stages “The Thanksgiving Play” as the third mainstage production of their remarkable 44^th season. The show opens March 5 and will run Tuesdays to Saturdays through the 30^th.

The play was written by Larissa Fasthorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, and the first female Native American playwright to have a show on Broadway when it premiered at the Helen Hayes Theatre in New York. It won a Drama League Award in 2023.

It’s a simple premise: a group of white theater nerds meet in an elementary school classroom to put together a dramatic rendition of the Thanksgiving story for their young students – the one we’ve always been told about the Pilgrims and the “Indians” and the turkey and the corn. But when the supposed Indigenous professional actress they hire turns out to be anything but, everything plunges headlong into hilarious absurdity as the hopelessly woke whites try to fashion a play that ultimately has nothing to do with the actual unsavory history of that occasion, and is completely devoid of any insight into a Native American perspective on it.

“It’s very funny,” said director Mimi McDonald. “It brings home how we really don’t know what to do with what actual history – as opposed to the glossed-up stories – tells us really happened. The takeaway is that we’re all just trying to figure things out, and it can get really funny and absurd as we do.”

Fasthorse herself has said she hopes the audience – while entertained by the laughter – will walk away with more questions than answers. But the main point she wants to cut through the laughter is this: “Doing nothing is not adequate anymore,” she says. “Stepping away because it’s too complicated can no longer be considered a part of any kind of solution.” This sentiment is brought to side-splitting life in her show’s audacious climax, which, for the sake of not spoiling the hilarity of it, will not be revealed here.

Entertainment Weekly said the play is “…a good dark comedy that makes you laugh, makes you think, makes you mad, makes your brain explode.” The Hollywood Reporter called it “Very, very funny…”.

Tickets are available at redbarntheatre.com or by calling 305-296-9911 and are already selling quickly. Ticketholders for the March 5 Opening Night will be invited to a catered Opening Night reception with the cast and crew.

“The Thanksgiving Play” is sponsored in part by Key West Compass Realty – Keller Williams, Culture Builds Florida, and the Monroe County Tourist Development Council.

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