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Miami University Theatre Brings you Thanksgiving in March


 

thanksgiving play sceneWelcome to a typical suburban drama classroom where a group of educators gathers to create a new Thanksgiving play for elementary school students. Earnest and well-intentioned, the teachers struggle with the layers of complexity surrounding the holiday. 

Miami University Theatre will open March 9 with The Thanksgiving Play directed by Gina Handy Minyard, a satirical comedy written in 2015 by Larissa FastHorse, an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Lakota Nation. The play was created in response to being told her plays including Indigenous characters couldn’t be produced because theatres struggled to find Native American actors. FastHorse challenged herself to write a play about issues facing Indigenous people without Indigenous characters. 

The Thanksgiving Play centers around a group of teachers trying to produce a Thanksgiving play without input from Native Americans while remaining politically correct. The play touches on historic issues of non-representation of Native American actors, failed attempts to represent indigenous people in American society and assumptions about Native American identity rather than tribal (national) identity.

thanksgiving promo

The Thanksgiving Play showtimes are at 7:30 p.m. March 9 - 12,  and at 2 p.m. March 13,  in the Studio 88 Theatre on the lower level of the Center for Performing Arts. 

Tickets can be purchased online or by contacting the Miami Box Office 513-529-3200. The Miami Box Office, located in the Campus Services office in Nellie Craig Walker Hall, is open Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for walk-up purchases.

Tickets will also be available at the door in the Center for Performing Arts. The onsite box office opens approximately one hour before curtain for walk-up sales and will call.

Written by Jeni Barton, College of Creative Arts