When is the Thanksgiving play in 2021?
Maintaining their place on the schedule of the newly-renovated Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab are the DMV-premieres of Larissa Fasthorse 's The Thanksgiving Play (September 29 - October 31, 2021) directed by Raymond O. Caldwell, and Clare Barron 's acclaimed Dance Nation (March 2- April 3, 2022) directed by Jenna Place. New to the schedule is the World Premiere of The Joy That Carries You (May 11 - June 12, 2022), a drama about an interracial couple in crisis by local playwriting team Awa Sal Secka and Dani Stoller (Signature's Easy Women Smoking Loose Cigarettes) that melds sharp comic dialogue and moving spoken-word poetry. This new play about love and family, privilege and responsibility, was workshopped this past summer with support from Olney Theatre's Vanguard Arts Fund, and takes the slot previously held by Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.
Who directed the Thanksgiving play?
We inaugurate the space with the country's most-produced comedy of 2019: The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa Fasthorse and directed by Raymond O. Caldwell. This hilarious sendup of "white wokeness" features an undaunted theatre teacher desperately trying to create a culturally sensitive play celebrating Thanksgiving: one that challenges stereotypes, meets all the requirements of a Native American Heritage Month grant and pacifies the parents. Larissa Fasthorse 's groundbreaking satire on the politics of representation throws together the overly-ambitious drama teacher, her yoga-bro actor friend, a history teacher with playwriting aspirations, and an "ethnically-ambiguous" L.A. actress to devise their Thanksgiving play, only to find themselves quickly sabotaged by myth, confounded by history and drawn into a hysterical project of dramatic pretzel-twisting. FastHorse is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of the Lakota people, and The Thanksgiving Play made her the first Native American playwright ever to make American Theater's annual list of "most-produced plays." Featuring: Parker Drown (A Chorus Line), David Schlumpf (Elf the Musical) and Dani Stoller (The Humans). The Thanksgiving Play runs September 20 - October 31, 2021. Invited press on October 3, 2021.
Is Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab completed?
Construction on the improved facilities in the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab was completed during the pandemic, and visitors to the airy, light-filled lobby and spacious backstage accommodations will enjoy a truly upgraded theatre-going experience.
