New Village Arts staging comically woke ‘Thanksgiving Play’ – San Diego Union-Tribune

The Thanksgiving dinner table is notorious for bringing together opposing sides of the political spectrum, usually with results more unpleasant than spoiled cranberries.

Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse’s “The Thanksgiving Play,” on the other hand, has the effect of unifying through humor. In her 90-minute satire, two teachers and two theater artists team up to create a politically correct, socially aware Thanksgiving pageant at an elementary school. But their efforts to try to do the right thing goes quite wrong.

“I love Larissa’s writing,” said Samantha Ginn, who plays schoolteacher Logan in New Village Arts Theater’s production of “The Thanksgiving Play,” which opens next week in previews. “She says it’s a play about performative wokeness. What I love so much about it is that there are jokes for anyone in it. It doesn’t matter what side you’re on. The left and right will come together and find humor in it.”

The NVA production grew out of a table reading among the staff last year, which then led to a staged reading Ginn directed. AJ Knox, who was at that first reading, co-stars with Ginn in this full production of “The Thanksgiving Play” along with Kenny Bordieri and Erica Marie Weisz. Bordieri and Weisz co-starred in NVA’s production of “The 39 Steps” earlier this year.

Daniel Jaquez, co-founder of San Diego’s Latinx company TuYo Theatre, is directing the NVA production. Jaquez recalled being in Portland, Oregon, where he was artistic director of Milagro Theatre, when FastHorse was commissioned to write what would be “The Thanksgiving Play” by neighboring Artists Repertory Theater.

“Her approach to playwriting is so bright and focused,” he said. “I’m very attentive to Larissa in terms of what she says about community. That theater is not a spectacle but a communication, a sharing of ideas and a way of allowing community to participate in that sharing of lives in order to create sympathy for other cultures, for other points of view, for your neighbors.”

In rehearsals of “The Thanksgiving Play,” Jaquez has integrated what he calls “a decolonizing process. Everyone has a voice. I have four very different actors. They’re all fabulous comics, but their style of comedy is not necessarily the same. I want to capture what they bring instead of me forcing, like ‘This is who Logan is.’”

“Logan” appreciates it too. “Daniel encourages collaboration,” said Ginn. “He says relationships aren’t a hierarchy; we’re all in horizontal relationships.

“What’s challenging about this play is that they (the characters) are ‘real’ people, so you have to play it like a drama. Daniel is intuitive and his mission is to ground us in the comedy. I’m an outside-in comedic actor, I like to go big. He is great about bringing us into truth.

“You have to play the seriousness of it, and that’s what makes it funny.”

FastHorse became the first female Native American playwright to ever have a work produced on Broadway, when “The Thanksgiving Play” opened last year at the Helen Hayes Theater in New York.

This is a script, Jaquez said, in which we can relate to its well-meaning but flawed characters: “They are humans who are really struggling. We get the message in terms of observing their behavior and comparing our own experiences.”

Ginn sees the same correlation. “You’re laughing at these people trying so hard to be good human beings, but failing,” she said. “We can see ourselves and people we know in these parts.”

‘The Thanksgiving Play’

When: Previews begin Oct. 4. Opens Oct. 12 and runs through Nov. 3. 7:30 pm Thursdays and Fridays; 2 and 7:30 pm Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Select Wednesdays at 2 p.m

Where: New Village Arts, 2787 State St., Carlsbad

Tickets: $25 and up

Phone: (760) 433-3245

Online: newvillagearts.org