Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota Nation) is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow, award-winning writer, choreographer and co-founder of Indigenous Direction, the nation’s leading consulting company for Indigenous arts and audiences. Her satirical comedy, "The Thanksgiving Play" (Playwrights Horizons/Geffen Playhouse), is one of the top 10 most produced plays in America this season. She is the first Native American playwright in the history of American theater on that list. Additional produced plays include "What Would Crazy Horse Do?" (KCRep), "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), and "Cherokee Family Reunion" (Mountainside Theater).
Over the past several years, FastHorse has created a nationally recognized trilogy of community engaged plays with Cornerstone Theater Company. The first was "Urban Rez," the second project, "Native Nation," was the largest Indigenous theater production in the history of American theater with more than 400 Native artists involved in the productions in association with ASU Gammage. Their current project, "The L/D/Nakota Project" is set in FastHorse’s homelands of South Dakota. Her radical inclusion process with Indigenous tribes has been honored with the most prestigious national arts funding from MacArthur, Creative Capital, MAP Fund, NEFA, First People’s Fund, the NEA Our Town Grant, Mellon Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and others.
Additional theaters that have commissioned or developed plays with FastHorse include The Public, 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.
FastHorse’s company, Indigenous Direction, recently produced the first land acknowledgement on national television for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC. Along with partner Ty Defoe, their other clients include Roundabout Theater Company, American Association of Arts Presenters (APAP), Western Arts Alliance, Guthrie, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Brown University and many more. Their groundbreaking work is redefining Indigenous art representation and education in America.
In 2019, FastHorse entered film and television with a series at Freeform, a movie for Disney Channel, and a special for NBC. She is currently in development as the creator for projects with Apple TV, Taylor Made Productions, Echo Lake and another NBC project. FastHorse began her writer training as a Sundance Native Feature Fellow, Fox Diversity Fellow, ABC Native American Fellow, and an intern at Universal Pictures before theater.
FastHorse’s other 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, and the UCLA Native American Program Woman of the Year. She was vice chair of the board of directors of Theater Communications group and represented by Jonathan Mills at Paradigm, New York.