A Feast of Titles Perfect for Thanksgiving

Celebrate the spirit of Thanksgiving by immersing yourself in these titles that capture the essence of the holiday. From heartwarming, nostalgic dramas to caustically funny comedies, these titles – set on Thanksgiving Day or at a similar family gathering – will make you grateful for the power of live theatre.

Family Holiday by DC Catho

A relaxing holiday is turned on its head in this hilarious farce about family secrets and coming out. RJ goes home for the holidays, hoping to have a nice, relaxing time with his family and best friend. Things don’t turn out as he expects when he arrives to find his sister newly single, his Nana on a health kick, his mother frantically dashing in and out, and his father nervous about all of the strange behavior. Secrets are revealed and RJ is stuck in the middle of this fast-paced holiday farce for modern times.

Home Front by James Duff

The action is set in a comfortable suburban home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where Bob and Maurine, a fairly well-off middle-aged couple, are living (apparently happily) with their daughter Karen, a graduate student, and their brooding son, Jeremy, who has recently returned from service in Vietnam. It is Thanksgiving Day, 1973, and they are furiously preparing for the imminent arrival of relatives for a family dinner. At first, the action of the play is refreshingly offhand and filled with warmhearted humor, with Maurine fluttering about chattering nonstop and Bob trying to disguise the fact that he has been smoking a forbidden cigarette. But then, as Jeremy’s cutting ripostes become more sarcastic and venomous, the mood changes – impelling a series of explosive confrontations as the others struggle to understand and accept Jeremy’s alarming bitterness and to convey the love and deep concern that they feel for him. But, in the end, the gulf between them is too great, the harsh words too hurtful, for harmony to be restored. Instead, there is violence and rage, and the shattering realization that what once was can be no more, and they can only pick up the pieces and go on as best they can.

In the Wake by Lisa Kron

It’s Thanksgiving of 2000 and the presidential election still has not been decided. Ellen insists that her friends and family don’t understand how bad the situation really is. But no one – not her loving partner, Danny, nor the passionate Amy, nor the brutally pragmatic and world-weary Judy – can make Ellen see the blind spot at the center of her own politics and emotional life. A funny, passionate and ultimately searing new play that illuminates assumptions that lie at the heart of the American character – and the blind spots that mask us from ourselves.

Making God Laugh by Sean Grennan

Making God Laugh follows one typical American family over the course of 30 years’ worth of holidays. Starting in 1980, Ruthie and Bill’s grown children – a priest, an aspiring actress, and a former football star – all return home, where they share their plans and dreams as they embark on their adult lives. The empty-nester parents contend with their own changes, too, as old family rituals are trotted out and ancient tensions flare up. As time passes, the family discovers that, despite what we may have in mind, we often arrive at unexpected destinations.

Thanks by Ken Dashow

This may be the Thanksgiving from hell, or one where a family may actually be saved. The prodigal son returns to find a hilarious and unhappy group – exactly as he left them. His determination to change things touches them all. Well, maybe one.

Thanksgiving Prayer by Alan Haehnel

Morgan is home from her visit to India, but she’s having a hard time reconciling the wealth surrounding her at Thanksgiving with the poverty she saw on her visit. This conflict becomes particularly poignant when her family gathers for the Thanksgiving prayer and Morgan attempts to express her frustrations.

The House of Yes by Wendy MacLeod

It’s Thanksgiving, and Marty’s arrival home is greatly anticipated by his mother, Mrs. Pascal, his twin sister, Jackie-O, and his younger brother, Anthony. He arrives during a hurricane, but worse than the storm is the fact that Marty brings Lesly, his fiancée. This ruins everything, and turns the family’s holiday upside down.

The Humans by Stephen Karam

Breaking with tradition, Erik Blake has brought his Pennsylvania family to celebrate Thanksgiving at his daughter’s apartment in lower Manhattan. As darkness falls outside the ramshackle pre-war duplex, eerie things start to go bump in the night and the heart and horrors of the Blake clan are exposed.

The Palace of the Moorish Kings by Jon Tuttle, based on the original short story by Evan S. Connell

Thanksgiving, 1970: The Cowboys and Packers are on TV, John Gary’s on the hi-fi, and friends are gathered for their traditional American feast. Members of the Greatest Generation now settled into conventional marriages and predictable careers, they are vaguely aware of the world moving on and away from them… and that something is coming for them. An unexpected call from a world-traveling old friend suddenly makes them confront all the choices they never knew they had, and the part of themselves that has died along the way. Based on the short story by Evan S. Connell, The Palace of the Moorish Kings asks us which terms of surrender we must accept in order to belong, and what we must abandon to stay free.

You Can’t Take It with You by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman

The family of Martin Vanderhof lives “just around the corner from Columbia University – but don’t go looking for it.” Martin is the paterfamilias of a large and extended family: his daughter, Penny, who fancies herself a romance novelist; her husband, Paul, an amateur fireworks expert; their daughter, Alice, an attractive and loving girl who is still embarrassed by her family’s eccentricities – which include a xylophone player/leftist leaflet printer, an untalented ballerina, a couple on relief, and a ballet master exiled from Soviet Russia. When Alice falls for Tony, a handsome scion of Wall Street, she fears that their two families – so unlike in manner, politics and finances – will never come together. During a disastrous dinner party, Alice’s prospective in-laws are humiliated in a party game, fireworks explode in the basement, and the house is raided by the FBI. Frustrated and upset, Alice intends to run away to the country, until her family comes to the rescue, bringing the happy couple together and reminding Tony’s father of the true priorities in life. After all, why be obsessed by money? You can’t take it with you.

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