Larissa FastHorse grew up in South Dakota, where she began her career as a ballet dancer and choreographer. Returning to an early interest in writing, she became involved in Native American drama, first in the Native film community, but she found her artistic home as a playwright. Her satirical comedy The Thanksgiving Play was one of the top ten most produced plays in America. She is the first Native American playwright in the history of American theater on that list. FastHorse also co-founded Indigenous Direction, a consulting firm that helps organizations and individuals who want to create accurate work by, for, and with Indigenous peoples. Personally, FastHorse challenges every theatre she works with to be sure that her work isn’t the only Indigenous art in the building and that she isn’t the only Indigenous person being paid in that season.
A 2020 MacArthur Fellow, some of FastHorse’s 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). Additional theaters that have commissioned or developed plays with her include The Public, Yale Repertory Theater, Guthrie, Geffen Playhouse, History Theater, Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences, Baltimore’s Center Stage, Arizona Theater Company, Mixed Blood, Perseverance Theater Company, The Lark Playwrights’ Week, the Center Theatre Group Writer’s Workshop, and The Berkeley Repertory Theater’s Ground Floor. She has recently returned to film and TV with projects at NBC, Disney Channel, Dreamworks, Apple, and Freeform.
(Bio excerpt from https://www.nativeartsandcultures.org/larissa-fasthorse)