A Lakota Playwright’s Take on Thanksgiving; Plus, Ayelet Waldman on Quilting to Stay Sane

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.
I'm David Remnick. The Thanksgiving play is a play about the making of a play.
It's also a very timely comedy about an awkward subject. The gap between the old story of the Thanksgiving holiday, the story we like to tell and grew up on, and what actually might have happened.
If you think you might enjoy seeing well-meaning liberals running afoul of their own good intentions, this is the play for you.

When the Thanksgiving play premiered on Broadway last year, our critic Vincent Cunningham spoke with the playwright Larissa Fast Horse. She's the only Native American woman to have a play produced on Broadway.
I grew up in South Dakota, where my Lakota people are from. But I was adopted at a young age, an open adoption to a white family who had worked on the reservation for a long time, the reservation that I'm from.
I was always raised very aware of my Lakota identity and my Lakota culture. And they brought a lot of mentors into my life and elders to help me stay connected in that way.
But at the same time, I was growing up in a very white culture, and my first career was in classical ballet, so it doesn't really get much whiter than that. I don't know, maybe opera, I'm not sure.
There's a list, but ballet is on the top. They're way up there, yeah.
They're always in the top five. So, you know, at the time, when I was younger, it was very painful to be separated from a lot of things I felt like I couldn't partake in because I wasn't raised on the reservation or I'd been away from my Lakota family so long.
And that was very hard, but now, you know, I really recognize it as my superpower that I can take Lakota culture and experiences and contemporary indigenous experiences and translate them into white for white audiences, which unfortunately are the majority of audiences still in American theater.

Yeah. I do want to go back to this thing about ballet because it does seem like this really important part of your life that you are a professional ballet dancer.
And how much did your training as a dancer, how much does that sort of stay with you? Is that a part of your approach as a writer? Do you think about that often when you're working? Oh, yes. My ballet background is hugely influential in my work as a playwright.
First off, just in the work ethic, ballet dancers are expected to be shown something once, and then you work on it on your own, and you come back, and you've got it down. Like, people aren't going to sit there and spend a lot of time spoon-feeding things or teaching you one thing at a time.
You're expected to learn it. You're expected to do your own training at night after six hours of classes and rehearsal.
You're, you know, you're expected to do a lot on your own. And that kind of work ethic certainly has helped me as a playwright where you spend, you know, months sometimes alone in your home writing and you could miss that deadline.
No one's going to yell at you. But also you can really see it in my writing.
There's a lot of movement-based acting.

I guess, you know, text-free scenes in my work.

The Thanksgiving play is a perfect example.

There's several scenes that have little to no text that are movement-based. And they are moving the story forward and they're essential to the story, but without using text or very little text and a lot of movement and gesture.
So the Thanksgiving play, it's about four people who, let's say, present as white, trying to put on a play about the first Thanksgiving and sort of trying and I think often failing to acknowledge this Native presence that they

are somehow trying to highlight. And I was thinking a lot about, let's say, what's happening

in Florida, about like how we educate our children about topics that might make them feel whatever,

guilty or upset. How much of today's dramas over education and race and history were you thinking

about with this new production? Oh, a lot. Yeah, I definitely have updated a lot for the Times.
It's interesting you mentioned Florida. The laws state if something causes, I think it's guilt, discomfort, or anguish based on your race.
It can't be taught in a school. You'll see those words in the play if you come to it.
I wanted to make sure that these people, because they are what I call performative wokeness. These are white folks, liberal folks, trying really hard to do everything right, and as you said, getting everything wrong.
And I wanted to make sure that they are people of today and not someone who can look at. I don't want people to be able to say, oh, well, since 2020, we've changed.
So this isn't me. Because it definitely still is.
But interestingly, one of my first writing mentors was the great Marita Mita, who is a Maori writer and filmmaker from New Zealand, Ete Roa. And she said to me at my very first screenplay that I wrote, before I was writing plays, she said, Larissa, you can be an artist or you can be an educator.
If you try to be both, you'll do one of them badly. So you have to pick one.
And I chose artist. And she said, there's certainly art that educates and there's education that's artistic, but you have to choose which one you are and stay true to that.
I mean, I imagine that that tension is exacerbated by the expectations of the audience, right? I mean, just the way the arts happen in America, usually the audiences are white. Right.
And they often, I think it's fair to say some people come to the theater on some level hoping to have some sort of educational experience as opposed to art. So it's like, what I love about your play is that it's like, no, you're just going to laugh and it's going to feel weird.
And is that something that you like to play with or is it something that feels like a hurdle? No, absolutely. No, I love that.
One thing I love about this play, there's a character named Alicia and she's played by Darcy Carton, a very funny, wonderful performer. And she's hired on the assumption that she is a Native person.
Right. And I thought about this because a lot of the literature that I was raised on, Black literature, passing is a big theme.
What does passing mean to you on stage and off? You know, I'm white passing in many ways. And yet at the same time, before I was writing when I was acting for a while, and the casting director said to me, we can tell you're not completely white and that's a problem.
And I was like, wow. And I was like, okay, I'm done.
There's nothing I can do about that. Is that America's subtitle? Is that perhaps the whole thing? Yes, that should be.
Yeah. A little subtitle underneath, United States of America, we can tell you're not white.
That's a problem. Yeah.
So it was, you know, so I'm, but I am very light skinned. And again, it was something that was sometimes painful because colorism, because colorism is a thing in our communities.
And it was sometimes painful that I was so light and white-passing growing up with a lot of full blood. My father is full blood, and they're much darker, my biological father.
And so I had some pain over that growing up, and especially because then I was raised away from it. It's like, you you know showing up again um however then on the other side on the white side which is like American theater um I am quite sure that I get into rooms that um not white passing native people would not get into yeah it's funny.
The other thing about Alicia is that she's brought in,

you know,

specifically and like,

not just to be an actorly presence,

but it's like,

we're going to use her expertise and we're going to like,

what do you have to say?

Please tell us,

you know,

wisdom.

I would imagine that that has some corollary to your experience.

Oh,

it's exhausting.

I would say,

I just can't imagine what it would be like to just like for white male playwright. Like they.
Like, they just walk into a theater, and they're just a playwright, and they don't do anything else. Like, I can't imagine what that's like.
I've never done it. Because, you know, I mean, I'm so fortunate with the career I've had, but I'm also the first one in 90% of the places I've worked.
Like, the first one in this theater, first one in, you know, it just goes on every, I've got six shows this year and it's like most of them I'm the first Native American, right? I guess this is, you know, the privilege of being the first means that I also have responsibility. I do what I call Indian 101 that all the staff has to come to, including front of house, box office, production, everybody, to help them understand Indigenous culture, the space they're standing in, and most importantly, our audiences that we're hoping to welcome into the theater.
And how do we welcome them in understanding that theater is a white culture? Western American theater is a white culture. You know, the assumptions you're making of what's acceptable behavior in theater is completely different than what is normal behavior in so many cultures in this continent.
One of the great things about the Thanksgiving play is that it spotlights so many things about theater that present to us as issues and actually say, well, do we really mean that? And I think we've all settled into an orthodoxy, let's say, of like, you can't play outside of your race, ethnicity, whatever, your look. But of course, what that means is if there aren't indigenous roles to play, indigenous actors are never able to do that act of representation.
In your experience, just working with actors and stuff, how have people started to think about that? So that's interesting because actually casting is still very complicated. Yeah.
Red Face is being done regularly all over our country, on film and TV, on stages. There's so many non-Indigenous actors still playing Indigenous roles.
And there's so many people calling themselves Indigenous that cannot in any way prove they're Indigenous and have no actual connection to any indigenous community

playing indigenous roles.

People say they understand more and they're doing better,

and yet there they are.

All red faces being done constantly.

Conversely, fascinatingly,

if you read the script of the Thanksgiving play,

I put in the character description

that people of color who can pass for white

should be considered for roles. And I was really proud of that.
But when I get to New York, we were told we can't put that in the casting breakdown. Well, you can't ask people to play someone else.
I was like, wait, there are still white people on these stages in New York City right now playing native. This was a few years ago, playing native, but you're saying I can't openly have non-white people play white people if they look white to you? And he's like, no, you absolutely can't.
I'm not allowed to ask people if they're Native American when they're being cast. And so we have to do this whole kind of song and dance of I kind of try to figure it out by chit-chat

and seeing like, and then people get all mad

because we cast a knot,

someone that turns out they weren't Native

or they didn't have a connection to the community.

And it's just, it's this constant like thing,

which is all part of, you know,

what we're dealing with in Thanksgiving play.

Well, yeah, I mean, one way of interpreting the show

is that it's about the sort of,

the most far-reaching implications of meaning well. It seems to me the people that are gonna that come to Broadway shows are like these same well-meaning people I don't know what has been the response to to to that this is kind of you what you know how do you feel about it's absolutely you I mean no like I do not hide that But, you know, yeah, I don't hide the fact that this is about, you know, white liberal folks, which tend to be theater goers, not all.
I mean, I think the thing that I keep saying, but it's been very important to me in this play, was that first it's fun and that you get to have a good time in the theater. And second, it's, I would say that's the sugar and then there's the medicine.
And so it's satire. It's a comedy within a satire.
So the satire is the medicine, and you have to keep taking it through it. And, you know, honestly, some people opt out.
We've had a couple people walk out. Really? And, like, once it got too far in, they were just like, no, this is too much.
I can imagine at least one scene where that might happen. But, you know, the vast majority of audiences are really raucously responsive and really having a fun time.
Last week, we had audience members talking to the stage, like talking back. And, I mean, it just got wild.
They added like six, seven, eight minutes to the show.

Yeah, it was crazy.

That's a lot of talking.

It was a lot of talking and chatting and clapping and, you know, responding.

And like, we love that.

Something that I've wondered, because I think most people who live on Manhattan think about the Lenape only usually before a show or something.

And then someone comes out and does a land acknowledgement and say, this is the land of the Lenape people. How do you feel about that practice? Yeah, I mean, land acknowledgement, honestly, I know in some places we're getting a little tired of it.
But I will say it's not everywhere. You know, for me, until everybody in the United States of America can name the indigenous land they're standing on, we need to keep doing it.
Good. Yeah.
But, you know, I always say, too, though, land acknowledgement is a step. So it's the first step of many steps toward reparation.
Right. So you have to at least know who reparations are owed to for the land that you're on, who are you paying rent to, and then you need to start paying the rent.
Thank you so much for doing this. Of course.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
It's so much fun. That's Larissa Fast Horse speaking with staff writer Vincent Cunningham last year when the Thanksgiving play premiered on Broadway.
It's been produced

all over the country. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come.
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All of a sudden, your Aunt Mary knows all your raunchy plans for the bachelor party.

On this week's On the Media from WNYC.

Find On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.
I'm David Remnick. If you're feeling a little stressed out lately, not that I'm implying anything stressful is going on, you might do what Ayelet Waldman did and take up a hobby.
It begins with a pattern or in the case of what's known as improv quilting, an idea, an emotion, or even just a whim. Today I'm in the mood to make circles.
Then there's the fabric. You choose it not only by color, but also how it feels in your hand.
Should the fabric be slick or should it be nubbly? Waldman is a novelist, an essayist, and earlier this year she wrote a piece for The New Yorker about quilting. Waldman discovered that quilting was not just pleasant or useful, but a way not to go out of your mind.
You sew two pieces together in a small block, and then small blocks together in larger blocks, each time returning to the iron to smooth the block into the cutting table. She talked with producer Jeffrey Masters, and he's also a recent convert.
Now, going back to last year, can you explain what was going on when you began quilting and how that launched you into this? It's such a strange, I don't even really understand it myself entirely, although I worked hard to figure it out in the essay that I wrote for you guys. So October 7th, I was born in Israel.
I have family there, but I've been a Palestinian peace activist for a really long time. On October 7th, I kind of lost my mind.
As the news was coming in, I was getting more and more distraught, obviously. And I couldn't sleep, and I was seeing the attack in my head, and I was getting up.
I was sleeping just a couple hours a night. And at some point, my older daughter and I, my daughter's very crafty, so I had bought her some fabric and a little sewing machine.
And I was looking at the sewing machine that I had bought, I took my laptop over and I switched over to this video.

I just Googled how to make a quilt.

And I found this video of this middle-aged lady.

Hi, everybody. It's Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company.

And I've got a really fun project for you today.

Take a look at this quilt behind me.

Gosh, doesn't this look like you worked hard?

From that moment, from literally that moment, every waking hour for months I was quilting I would get up in the morning I would go to the sewing machine I would quilt all day and then I'd go to sleep it wasn't like I was checking out it was not that so I was still very much involved and invested in what was going on, but somehow I could tolerate it while I was using my hands. And I decided I want to know how and why.
And so you went to YouTube to learn how to do this. That's where I started, too, when I made my first quilt.
Well, what made you do it? Oh, I don't know. I don't have a good answer for you.

I just felt this call.

But I did relate to this concept you wrote about, which was I'd never heard of, called piecing for cover.

Yes.

Which I guess it just means you're making something for warmth to be used, not for display.

And that I really related to because I wanted to make something useful. I'm like kind of obsessed with this idea of like the apocalypse and like what will happen if we like lose technology and I was like I make radio like I can't trade a podcast episode for food but and I mean this like genuinely if something felt like safe and like familiar that I now have this like skill I can like use if it all goes to hell.
I haven't thought of it that way, but I think it's so, there is really part of it in this way. I mean, what I want to make is I want to make something that I can find comfort in.
I don't make small quilts ever. I make quilts that I like, I'll make a quilt you can cuddle up under on the couch, but mostly I make quilts.
My first quilt was for a twin size bed, which is crazy. They're like, oh, do one that's like, you know, one panel.
What about you? What was your first quilt? Oh, it was way too big for our first quilt. It's five feet by seven feet.
Exactly. You did the same thing.
Yeah. It just all goes back to wanting to like make something useful.
But tell me this. You said that when you first started quilting, you were doing it all day.
Now, how many hours do you spend a day quilting? Six. Okay, so you're like, what did you used to do at that time? Well, that's what I asked my husband.
Oh my God, this is the exact question. I said to Michael, dude, what did I do with my days before? But I think I swore to God, Jeffrey, I think I was just online.
I think a lot of this time is time I didn't even realize I was spending on the internet. And the reason I think I didn't even realize was because the physical act of wasting time for me is identical to the physical act of working.
So if I get up from my laptop after spending the entire day on my laptop, I'm like, okay, well, that was working. And then if I really parse it out, how much of that time was actually working? Four hours, five hours, max, or nothing, depending on my state of procrastination.
So honestly, I feel like I was literally spending that time on the internet. I think one of the things I like so much about your piece in New Yorker too is that this is not just like one person's like personal story about like what they do to de-stress and get less anxious.
You actually interviewed brain surgeons and neuroscientists that confirmed that this is like what like the vast majority of people also can experience because of our like brain makeup and chemistry. Yeah, I mean, it's remarkable.
I knew something had to be going on with my brain because I was feeling so different. I was managing stress.
And I think it was the first time that I was stressing out about something and my husband said to me, why don't you go quilt? And I thought, huh, yes. And also what the heck is going on? So- Was that an immediate feeling in your brain, in your body? Totally.
I smell the fabric, I hear the machine and I start touching the fabric and I am like everything that's going on in that agitation you feel when you're stressed, that kind of feeling in your throat, in your stomach, in the back, it just vanishes. It's so curious.
Let me tell you a little bit about what I think is going on in your brain and what all of these various neurosurgeons have told me. Okay.
So some of it has to do with this idea of bilateral brain activity. So, you know, we have our right brain and our left brain.
And when we are engaged in bilateral stimulation, that actually makes us relaxed. It induces a kind of comfortable feeling and quilting and some other handwork is a very bilateral activity because you're using both your hands.
You're going back between things that are very technical and mathy and, kind of creative thing. And you're doing that sort of alternating back and forth.
And then there's this amazing thing called your default mode network. So the default mode network is this brain system that is active when you're in the state of, think about wakeful rest, right? You're letting your mind wander.
It might be when you're on a walk, when you're not controlling what you're thinking about, right? And that kind of wakeful rest, when your default mode network kind of switches on and takes over, is very, very restful. And when you go back to paying attention, you find yourself kind of rested and invigorated.

You know, that reminds me that in 2017, you wrote the book, A Really Good Day, about microdosing LSD as a way to help mood and anxiety disorders. Right.
Does quilting have the same effect for you? Totally. I mean, that's what's so interesting.
That's crazy. Like the book that I wrote, like the big discovery I made.

So A Really Good Day is about an experiment microdosing with LSD. And the big discovery I made doing all this research about psychedelics and the brain is that what psychedelics do is push your default.
I mean, this is obviously very simplified. They push your default mode network off the track.

And having your default mode network veer off into a new and different direction can be really productive.

So to find out that this other thing that I'm doing is also inextricably linked to the default mode network is really fascinating.

That's also not illegal. There's no crime involved in quilting.
You can read Ayelet Waldman's essay, Piecing for Cover, at newyorker.com. She spoke with Jeffrey Masters, a senior producer on our show.
You and I, we're taking this show on the road. We're going to go to QuiltCon.
We're going to go to Missouri Star. You're going to turn the New Yorker Radio Hour into all quilting.
The whole country's going to lose its mind. David, step aside.
I'm David Remnick. That's our program for today.
If you're traveling this week, be safe, good luck, and have a wonderful holiday. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Sommer.
With guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan, and Alejandra Decket. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherena Endowment Fund.
Chloe, you know what I think the world really needs? What? More fashion. The people want it.
The people have asked for it. The people are getting it.
Yes, everyone's in luck. I'm Nicole Phelps, the director of Vogue Runway, and I'm excited to announce that the run-through is coming to Tuesdays.
The run-through is now going to be twice a week. Every Tuesday, join me and the Vogue Runway team as we dig into the latest fashion news.

Thursdays will still be Chloe and Shoma talking about the latest in fashion and culture per usual.

And Tuesdays, more fashion, fashion, fashion.