For Immediate Release: October 30, 2025
Media Contact: Joshua Henry Jenkins | [email protected]

 

Theatre Communications Group to Publish Native Nation Project by Larissa FastHorse and Michael John Garcés


A dynamic trilogy of plays that celebrates Indigenous resilience and centers Native voices on their own terms.

New York, NY – Theatre Communications Group (TCG) is proud to announce the publication of Native Nation Project by Larissa FastHorse and Michael John Garcés, a collection of three groundbreaking plays that redefine community-based storytelling and Indigenous representation on the American stage. The book will be published on November 18, 2025, and is available now for pre-order.

“Native Nation Project embodies what it means for theatre to be rooted in community,” said Alisha Tonsic, Co-Executive Director National Operations and Business Development at TCG. “Through this trilogy, Larissa FastHorse, Michael John Garcés, and their collaborators show how storytelling can serve as both resistance and restoration by centering Indigenous voices, histories, and futures in ways that transform not only the stage, but the field itself.”
Developed with Cornerstone Theater Company and Native artists and culture bearers across the country, Native Nation Project features three distinct but interconnected plays:
  • Urban Rez – A kaleidoscopic look at Native life in Los Angeles, exploring the politics of tribal identity and federal recognition.
  • Native Nation – An immersive epic that tells the story of the land of Arizona through the eyes of its original people.
  • Wicoun – A thrilling coming-of-age journey, created with people of the Lakota and Dakota tribal nations, about kinship, two-spirit identity, and survival, complete with zombies and Native superheroes.
Together, the trilogy examines urgent issues facing Indigenous communities today, including tribal sovereignty, climate justice, food equity, and cultural survival, while also celebrating humor, resilience, and love.
 
“Urban Rez, Native Nation, and Wicoun are designed to be what FastHorse calls ‘intentionally incompatible experiences’ for non-Indigenous people. While she isn’t actually trying to alienate white theatregoers, the trilogy’s narratives avoid any pretense that they need or want a non-Indian stamp of approval. Instead, said FastHorse, these works are created by and for Indigenous people as a way for them to tell their stories the way they want them told.” —American Theatre 
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota Nation) is a writer/choreographer, and co-founder of Indigenous Direction, the nation’s leading consulting company for Indigenous arts and audiences. FastHorse is the first Native American playwright in the history of American theater to have a play on the top ten most-produced list, with The Thanksgiving Play. The Thanksgiving Play was the first play written by an Indigenous woman ever to be produced on Broadway. Additional produced plays include What Would Crazy Horse Do?, Landless, Cow Pie Bingo, Average Family, Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: a Class Presentation, Vanishing Point, and Cherokee Family Reunion (Mountainside Theater). FastHorse is the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. She lives in Santa Monica with her husband, the sculptor Edd Hogan.

Michael John Garcés is the former artistic director of Cornerstone Theater Company. He is a recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, the Princess Grace Statue, the Alan Schneider Director Award, TCG/New Generations Grant, and the Non-Profit Excellence Award from the Center of Non-Profit Management. He serves as Executive Vice President of the board of the Stage Directors and Choreography Society.

His plays include 36 Yesses and Magic Fruit (Cornerstone); TOWN (Theatre Horizon); and south (Great Plains Theatre Commons). Directing credits include The Rivers Don't Know by James McManus (City Theatre Company); Highland Park is Here by Mark Valdez (Cornerstone and Latino Theatre Company’s “Re:Encuentro 2021”); The Play You Want by Bernardo Cubria (The Road Theatre); Seize the King by Will Power (The Alliance); Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play (The Geffen Playhouse) and Urban Rez (Cornerstone); and the just and the blind by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center). He is a professor of practice in English at Arizona State University.

PUBLICATION DETAILS

Native Nation Project
By Larissa FastHorse and Michael John Garcés
248 pages | $22.95
Published by Theatre Communications Group
Publication Date: November 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781636702476

Since its founding in 1984, TCG Books has grown to become North America’s largest independent trade publisher of dramatic literature, with 22 winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama on its book list. The book program commits to the life-long career of its playwrights, keeping all of their plays in print. TCG Books events are supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
 
Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, leads for a just and thriving theatre ecology. Since its founding in 1961, TCG’s constituency has grown from a handful of groundbreaking theatres to over 750 organizations (including member theatres, affiliates, universities) and over 3,000 individual members. Through its programs and services, TCG reaches over one million students, audience members, and theatre professionals each year. TCG offers networking and knowledge-building opportunities through research, communications, and events, including the biennial TCG National Conference, one of the largest nationwide gatherings of theatre people; awards grants and scholarships to theatre companies and individual artists; advocates on the federal level; and through the Global Theater Initiative, TCG's partnership with the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, serves as the U.S. Center of the International Theatre Institute. TCG is North America’s largest independent trade publisher of dramatic literature, with 21 Pulitzer Prizes for Drama on the TCG booklist. It also publishes the award-winning American Theatre magazine and ARTSEARCH®, the essential source for a career in the arts. TCG believes its vision of “a better world for theatre, and a better world because of theatre” can be achieved through individual and collective action, adaptive and responsive leadership, and equitable representation in all areas of practice. TCG is led by Emilya Cachapero, LaTeshia Ellerson and Alisha Tonsic. www.tcg.org.

 

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