OKC theater serving up spicy satire with 'Thanksgiving Play:' What to know about the show

With a swivel of his hips entirely inappropriate for the children's show his character is supposed to be starring in, Paxton Kliewer drawls out a suggestive line about honoring and recognizing the power of the sacral chakra of one his co-stars, played by Kerynn Eckenrode .

"That's enough," says director Alice Reagan , halting a recent rehearsal to give the actor some notes on blocking the scene to make it arguably even more inappropriate.

"That's so bad," Kliewer says with a chuckle as he resets for another practice run at the scene, prompting his fellow performers to loose the laughter they've been holding back.

The cast and crew Oklahoma City Repertory Theater 's production of "The Thanksgiving Play" hope that audiences who see the show also won't be able to hold back their laughter, even if it means cackling through their discomfort.

"I want people to know that they have permission from the cast and creative team to laugh," Eckenrode said, taking a break after the rehearsal. "There were times when I was reading the script where I was like, 'This is really funny, but I almost feel guilty ... for laughing.' But I think it's OK to laugh, and I think that was Larissa FastHorse 's intention."

With "The Thanksgiving Play," FastHorse , who is from the Sicangu Lakota Nation in South Dakota, last year became the first Native American woman playwright to have a show produced on Broadway. OKC Rep is opening its 2024-2025 season , which consists entirely of regional premieres, with FastHorse's hit holiday comedy about good intentions outlandishly served up with absurd assumptions.

What is 'The Thanksgiving Play' about?

In FastHorse's spicy satire, a troupe of white, well-meaning, terminally woke teaching artists scramble to create a grade-school Thanksgiving pageant that somehow manages to celebrate both Turkey Day and Native American Heritage Month . The hit comedy made Theatre Communications Group's list of top 10 most-produced plays in American theater for the 2023-2024 season.

In a 2023 NPR interview, FastHorse described the history of Thanksgiving as a "wild mess of muckiness."

"It deals with all the things I wanted to deal with as far as the contemporary Indigenous experience," FastHorse told NPR of "The Thanksgiving Play." "It's really showing us what it's like to be us. Like, what is it like to be myself in these rooms that are primarily white, that are primarily non-Indigenous in all ways."

An award-winning professional regional theater , OKC Rep is staging the "The Thanksgiving Play" for the first time in the state formerly known as Indian Territory . Performances are Nov. 7-17 at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center's Te Ata Theater, a venue named for a trailblazing Chickasaw storyteller .

"Oklahoma has a special relationship to Native American history. ... So, I think our audiences bring an extra level of awareness that maybe audiences in New York City on Broadway didn't," said OKC actor Ronn Burton .

"Hopefully, we'll get some Native American people in the audience, because we have a generally higher Native population than other places might. But people of any ethnicity, when they come see the show, hopefully they'll have here a little bit more of an awareness of the general Native culture — and therefore will be able to see all of the inadvertent atrocities these four well-intentioned but bumbling people commit along the way."

How is OKC Repertory Theater partnering with First Americans Museum for 'The Thanksgiving Play?'

"The Thanksgiving Play" centers on four theater artists: Logan ( Christine Mayland Perkins ) a high school drama teacher determined to create a culturally sensitive Thanksgiving play; Caden (Burton), an elementary history teacher determined to make the show historical accurate no matter what it takes; Jaxton (Kliewer), Logan's yoga instructor/actor boyfriend who is politically correct to a fault; and Alicia (Eckenrode), a professional actress hired to bring authenticity to the production.

"We got to go to the First Americans Museum on Indigenous Peoples Day as our start of rehearsal. It's a beautiful museum, and it was really helpful to see all of the information together in one place, put together by the people who it's about," said Perkins, who based in Chicago, learned about tryouts for the OKC production while visiting family in the metro area and decided to audition for the show.

Emily Comisar, OKC Rep's new executive artistic director, said the theater is partnering with the Oklahoma City museum in other ways for the production.

"We're building a relationship with FAM, not just visiting the museum, but we turned over one of our preview nights to FAM to invite whoever they wanted to invite. So, they're bringing a lot of their membership in," Comisar said.

The OKC theater's staffers also have been working to book Native American performers for its pre-show performances called Rep Rallies .

When they see the play, Kliewer said he hopes that local audiences will be able to look at Thanksgiving and other aspects of American life that they take for granted in a new way — and hopefully, they'll do that in between hearty servings of laughter.

"The First Americans Museum is right there. ... There is the Choctaw Cultural Cente r. There is so much rich culture and things to understand and to glean from the cultures of Oklahoma. But even people that live here, like me, I can tell you about Oklahoma history, but I can't tell you very much about Native American culture. I've really learned a ton getting to do this show," Kliewer said.

"It makes people really uncomfortable to think about, 'The whole reason that I am here, and I have this comfortable lifestyle where ... I don't have to be in fear of whatever persecution, all of that is because of genocide. The reason that I have all of these things that I have is because something terrible happened a long time ago.' It is really hard to reconcile that — and it is great fodder for a silly play, because it does open it up to be able to speak about it."

The Norman actor said playing a character with a name and several traits similar to his own does nothing to diminish his own discomfort with "The Thanksgiving Play."

"One of our props that we have is a canvas Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center bag, and the bag that I carry with me every day that has all of my things is the exact same. . ... I have a Nalgene water bottle that I drink out of every day. And I have a prop for Jaxton that is a Nalgene water bottle that is a different color, but it has stickers on it the same way," Kliewer said with a laugh.

"I am probably kinder than him, but I fall into the same pitfalls as him all the time, because I'm a white person and I don't understand what it's like to not really be. ... The people of Oklahoma City are a lot more like Logan and Jaxton than they realize — and I think that this is going to be a fun little poke in the side to be like, 'Hey, we all could probably be better.'"

'The Thanksgiving Play'

• When:Nov. 7-17.

• Where:Oklahoma Contemporary's Te Ata Theater, 11 NW 11.

• Tickets: https://www.okcrep.org/thethanksgivingplay .

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Native American writer's trailblazing play debuts in OKC for the holidays