Who's Who in the Cast & Crew
Randy Reinholz (Choctaw) (Playwright * All Characters in play)
Randy Reinholz, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is Founding Artistic Director Emeritus of Native Voices at the Autry, the nation’s premier Equity theater company dedicated exclusively to developing and producing new plays by Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and First Nations playwrights.
Reinholz is an accomplished producer, director, playwright, actor, and activist. His play Off the Rails, directed by Bill Rauch, had its world premiere and a sold-out run at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Reinholz’s other plays include A New Story from Rabbit and Frog and Under a Big Sky. He has several new scripts and media projects in development. He has produced more than 35 new scripts and directed over 75 plays in the United States, Australia, Mexico, Great Britain, and Canada. Under his tenure, Native Voices has presented 300 workshops and presentations of Native plays, with artists from more than 100 distinct tribal nations. Some of Reinholz’s favorite productions were at Geva Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Perseverance Theatre, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, New York, and Washington D.C., Arena Stage, Idaho Rep, New York’s Public Theater, and the Autry Museum, Los Angeles.
University and institutional directorial credits include 30th International Theatre Institute World Congress, UNESCO Metro Theatre, Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico; Brisbane Library, Brisbane, Australia; American Indian Community House, New York; Native Earth Performing Arts, Toronto, Canada; International Third World Conference, Chicago, IL; The Playwrights’ Center Minneapolis, McKnight National Residency Program; Alaska Native Heritage Center, Anchorage, AK; San Diego State University; Theatre Cornell; Illinois State University; Duke University; University of Massachusetts; University of Arizona; University of Miami, Ohio; Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia; Harlaxton College, Grantham, UK; First Nations House of Learning; University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; Idyllwild Arts, Idyllwild California; The Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK; The Cherokee Casino, Cherokee, NC; and The Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Reinholz has received Playwrights’ Arena’s Lee Melville Award, the Association of Theatre in Higher Education’s Ellen Stewart Award for Career Achievement in Professional Theatre, The Los Angeles Drama Circle’s Gordon Davidson Award, a McKnight Fellowship, a Map Grant, a Ford Foundation Grant, and numerous NEA grants. He was the President of the National Theater Conference, is a trustee of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, and is on the National Advisory Board for the Valdez Last Frontier Theatre Conference. He served on the Los Angeles County, Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative Advisory Committee, and ATHE’s National Leadership Institute. Reinholz is a tenured Professor at San Diego State University, where he also served as Director of the School of Theatre, Television, and Film. Reinholz served as a Council Member (Board of Directors), for The Dramatist Guild of America, 2019-2020.
Jean Bruce Scott (Dramaturg)
Jean Bruce Scott is known for numerous lead and recurring roles on Days of Our Lives, Magnum, P.I., Port Charles, Newhart, Matlock, Airwolf, and St. Elsewhere, as well as guest starring on many other series and television movies. Her illustrious background includes extensive theatre credits and serving as president of Sine Bahn Productions, an independent production company developing screenplays, teleplays, and stage plays. She most recently starred in Driving Miss Daisy for the Idaho Rep.
As co-founder and Producing Executive Director emerita of Native Voices at the Autry, Scott spent 25 years developing new plays, including more than 200 by Native American playwrights. She produced 38 plays (including 27 world premieres), 25 New Play Festivals, 9 Short Play Festivals, 16 Playwrights Retreats, and 22 national and international tours. Scott was instrumental in formalizing the Native Voices Artists Ensemble to mentor and support Native American writers, actors, directors, stage managers, and producers.
In addition to her work in Los Angeles, Scott produced the annual Native Voices Festival of New Plays at La Jolla Playhouse from 2008 to 2019 and was the producer on site from 2016 to 2018 when Native Voices was the LJP Resident Theatre Company. As co-creator of the Native Radio Theater Project, a collaboration between Native Voices and Native American Public Telecommunications/Vision Maker Media, Scott produced 15 radio plays, including the radio series Super Indian. While developing the Alaska Native Playwrights Project, Scott wrote curriculum, created workshops, and brought in guest artists and dramaturgs, mentoring 28 Alaska Native playwrights whose plays have been produced at Perseverance Theatre, Native Voices at the Autry, and La Jolla Playhouse.
Scott served on the Leadership Board of the Theatrical Producers League of Los Angeles, the Board of Directors of the San Diego Latino Film Festival, and the National Theatre Conference in New York, where she chaired the Stavis Award for Outstanding Playwright from 2019 to 2022. She is on the Valdez Last Frontier Theatre Conference National Advisory Board. Scott has received a McKnight Fellowship, a Map Grant, Numerous NEA Grants, Playwrights Arena’s Lee Melville Award, and the Los Angeles Drama Circle’s Gordon Davidson Award.
Robert Caisley (Dramaturg)
Robert Caisley’s plays have been performed across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom and translated into Italian, French, Estonian, Spanish and Czech. He is the Chair of Theatre and Head of Playwriting at the University of Idaho. Caisley is a recipient of a 2015-16 Fellowship in the Performing Arts from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the UI 2015 Excellence in Research and Creativity Award. He is a three-time alum playwright of the National New Play Network and former featured playwright at Seven Devils Playwrights Conference.
His play Lucky Me has been produced by New Jersey Repertory Theatre, Curious Theatre in Denver, Riverside Theatre in Iowa City, 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa, CA, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, The Modern Theatre, Spokane, WA, Theatre Tallahassee in Florida, and CAT Theatre in Richmond, VA, and enjoyed an NNPN Rolling World Premiere in the 2014-15 season. Lucky Me subsequently toured with the Vana Baskini Teater in Estonia in its 2018-19 season and then enjoyed an extended run at Divadlo Ungelt in Prague. His play Happy, first presented at the 2011 National New Play Network (NNPN) Annual Showcase of New Plays at InterACT Theatre in Philadelphia, was a 2012 Finalist for both the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s New Play Conference and the Woodward/Newman Award for Drama at Bloomington Playwrights Project, and was selected for a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere in the 2012/2013 season at New Theatre (Miami, FL), Montana Repertory Theatre (Missoula, MT), 6th Street Playhouse (Santa Rosa, CA) New Jersey Repertory and Redtwist Theatre (Chicago, IL), where it was named by Chicago Magazine as of the “Nine Best Comedies” of the season. Happy was also nominated for a Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Best Original Script and won the 2014 SOTA Award for Best Play. It received its Spanish-language premiere in 2018 at Teatro Milan in Mexico City, where it was nominated for a 2018 theatre Billboard Award. The play was revived in 2019 and ran for over 100 performances and is currently running in Buenos Aires at El Piccolino Teatro. Other plays include: The Open Hand (Clarence Brown Theatre, Phoenix Theatre), A Masterpiece of Comic … Timing (B Street Theatre) and Front. His latest play is Snow Fever: A Karaoke Christmas (B Street Theatre, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Phoenix Theatre).
Roger Amerman/ Aba Cha Ha (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) (Program Art)
Roger Amerman is a Choctaw Elder, a Choctaw Nation Master Artist, award winning bead artist, ethnogeologist, ethnobotanist, educator, beadwork and cultural interpretation consultant for the Marvel/Disney Plus TV series Echo, and a former US National Park Service Ranger (Historical Interpretation Division). He is the great-grandson of the late original 1906 Choctaw enrollee Reverend Redmond Bond, who embraced and nurtured the Choctaw and Chickasaw communities by horseback in the dangerous "Homeland" outback of Marlow and south-central Indian Territory OK between 1890 and 1930.