Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota)
Playwright
Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota) is an award-winning playwright, director, and choreographer based in Santa Monica. Larissa’s produced plays include Urban Rez (Cornerstone Theater Company), Landless (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). Two new plays, What Would Crazy Horse Do? (Kansas City Rep) and The Thanksgiving Play (Artist’s Rep), are being produced in 2017.
Additional theaters that have commissioned or developed plays with Larissa include Kennedy Center TYA, Baltimore’s Center Stage, Arizona Theater Company, Mixed Blood, the Center Theatre Group Writer’s Workshop and Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor. Larissa was awarded the PEN USA Literary Award for Drama, NEA Distinguished New Play Development Grant, Joe Dowling Annamaghkerrig Fellowship, AATE Distinguished Play Award, Inge Residency, Sundance/Ford Foundation Fellowship, Aurand Harris Fellowship, the UCLA Native American Program Woman of the Year and numerous Ford and NEA Grants. She is a current member of the Playwright’s Union, Director’s Lab West 2015, Theatre Communications Group board of directors, Playwright’s Center Core Writers and is an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Lakota.