FastHorse to Deliver 2025 Convocation Address
Trailblazing playwright and choreographer Larissa FastHorse, whose work blends sharp humor with social commentary, will deliver the 2025 convocation address for Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy.
FastHorse, named a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow for her exceptional creativity, made history as the first known female Native American playwright to have a work produced on Broadway when her comedy The Thanksgiving Play—a satirical look at cultural appropriation—debuted in 2023.
She was later tapped to create a radically reimagined version of the classic 1954 musical Peter Pan—one without derogatory references to Native Americans and women—which is now touring nationally.
The celebration begins at 2:30 p.m. June 16 at the Ryan Fieldhouse, 2333 Campus Drive, on Northwestern’s Evanston campus. A reception for graduates and their families will follow the ceremony.
“Larissa is an incredible artist whose work addresses important social issues in a way that is provocative, satirical, and funny,” said School of Education and Social Policy Dean Bryan Brayboy, who co-hosted a conversation with FastHorse and School of Communication Dean E. Patrick Johnson in Harris Hall last year. “She is someone I deeply admire and respect for her commitments to fostering meaningful conversations around difficult topics.”
In addition to FastHorse’s keynote, convocation will feature the annual Alumni Leadership Award, given to one undergraduate and one graduate student for exceptional leadership. Graduating seniors Jackson Gordwin and Maya Vuchic are the 2025 convocation co-chairs.
FastHorse, whom The Nation recently described as “arguably the busiest writer of the moment—certainly in the theater world,” joined Arizona State University in 2023 as a professor of practice in the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Department of English.
“Over the years, FastHorse, 53, has transformed her experiences as a Native American navigating her way through the worlds of theater, nonprofits, TV writing and ballet into thought-provoking, often wickedly funny work,” The New York Times wrote in 2024.
“Her plays are both a way of confronting that ‘great erasure’— ‘the last thing people tend to think about are Native Americans,’ she said—and replacing offensive stereotypes, like the ‘Hollywood Indians’ she grew up watching on TV, with more nuanced and human portrayals.”
Her most recent play, a comedy titled Fake It Until You Make It, focuses on people who claim a different identity for personal gain and wokeism. “It highlights the absurdities of ambition and authenticity,” Michele Willens wrote in The Nation.
FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is co-founder of Indigenous Direction, a consulting company for Indigenous artists and audiences.
Her other honors include the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award for an American Playwright, NEA Distinguished New Play Development Grant, Joe Dowling Annamaghkerrig Fellowship, AATE Distinguished Play Award, Inge Residency, Sundance/Ford Foundation Fellowship, Aurand Harris Fellowship, and the UCLA Native American Program Woman of the Year.
She is co-vice chair of the board of Playwrights Horizons and is represented by Jonathan Mills at Paradigm NY. She lives in Santa Monica with her husband, sculptor Edd Hogan.