The Hampton Theatre Company opens its 2025-26 season today at 7 p.m. with “The Thanksgiving Play,” an acclaimed comedy by Larissa FastHorse that will run through Nov. 2 at the Quogue Community Hall.
The production marks the first installment of the company’s Jane Stanton Celebrating Women in Theatre initiative, a three-season commitment to staging plays written and directed by women.
With “The Thanksgiving Play,” Ms. FastHorse, a citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, became the first known female Indigenous playwright to be produced on Broadway, where it opened at the Hayes Theater in 2023. Her work is known for blending humor with social criticism, especially regarding Indigenous representation in American culture.
“The Thanksgiving Play” centers around a group of four well-meaning but culturally insensitive educators, one of whom, an elementary school teacher, attempts to create a pageant about the first Thanksgiving that challenges stereotypes and meets the requirements of the Native American Heritage Month grant.
The four are forced to confront the complexities of privilege, and quickly find themselves sabotaged by myth and undone by history, as the play skewers the hypocrisies of woke America.
While the play is farce, that is not an end in itself, according to Jesse Green in his New York Times review. “Rather, it is the hilarious envelope in which she delivers a brutal satire about mythmaking, and thus, in a way, about theater itself. The stories we create can do almost as much harm as the false histories they purport to commemorate, she shows. And well-meaning people can, too.”
Directed by Mary Powers, the production features three theater company veterans, Molly Brennan, Jason Moreland, and Lindsey Sanchez, as well as Scott J. Butler, a newcomer. George Loizides is the producer, set design is by Ms. Powers, lighting by Sebastian Paczynski, sound/video design by Meg Sexton, and costume design by Teresa LeBrun.
Performances will take place Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30. An additional matinee will happen on Nov. 1 at 2:30. The shows on Friday, Oct. 24, and Oct. 31 will be followed by conversations with the director, cast, and guest panelists.
Tickets are $40 for adults, $36 for senior citizens, $25 for students 25 and under, and $30 for veterans and Native Americans.
