Design Statement
The Thanksgiving Play is a show about the absurdity of white people navigating devising a school thanksgiving play. Exploring white guilt and how white people often avoid real discomfort when doing antiracism work, which perpetuates more harm. The script reveals the absurdity of this belief system by juxtaposing realistic classroom scenes of performative anti racism and K-12 structural racism surrounding thanksgiving with scenes of indigenous resistance. The lighting emphasizes this shift by lighting the scenes vastly differently. The classroom is lit in a realistic, stark ‘fluorescent’ light. It is bright, but uninviting and feels oppressive, while the indigenous resistance scenes are lit in bold color. This bright color crafts an inviting, optimistic, upbeat feeling for these scenes. This creates a positive association for the audience, which aids the script's goal of motivating the audience to do the harder work to break through performative activism and to take more active steps in uplifting indigenous people.​