Each month on The Subtext, Brian speaks with a playwright about life, writing, and whatever itches we are scratching.

Since the last time Larissa FastHorse, a Sicangu Lakota Nation playwright and choreographer, was on this podcast a decade ago, she became the first known female Native playwright to be produced on Broadway debut in 2022, with her satirical comedy The Thanksgiving Play. It has since been one of the most-produced plays in America and abroad, with over 300 separate productions.

In this episode, Brian catches up with FastHorse, filling in the last 10 years. (You can listen to their original 2016 conversation here.) They discuss how she developed and came to perform in her autobiographical solo show Fancy Dancer (in collaboration with Seattle Children’s Theatre, Seattle Rep, and History Theatre), what to do when the MacArthur Foundation calls you, her long-running collaboration with Michael John Garcés, and how she has spent years working hard to expand Native American involvement and inclusion in the American theatre as the co-founder of Indigenous Direction, a leading consulting company for Indigenous arts and audiences—with mixed results.

FastHorse is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, 2020 MacArthur Fellow, and a professor of practice (literature) at Arizona State University’s Department of English. Her revised book for the Jerome Robbins Peter Pan musical toured nationally and internationally. Additional produced plays include Fake It Until You Make It, For the People, The Democracy Project, What Would Crazy Horse Do?, Landless, Cow Pie Bingo, Average Family, Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: a Class Presentation, and Cherokee Family Reunion. She has developed work with Center Theatre Group, the Public Theater, Second Stage, Yale Rep, Cornerstone, and Arena Stage.

The play filling Brian up this month is Circle of Five by J. Isabel Salazar. Learn more here.

This episode can also be found here, and is also available on iTunes and Spotify.