Native Voices at the Autry - About Us

Mission Statement

Native Voices at the Autry is devoted to developing and producing new works for the stage by Native American playwrights.

History

Native Voices at the Autry is devoted to developing and producing new works for the stage by Native American playwrights. It was established in 1999 to provide a supportive and collaborative setting for Native American playwrights and actors from across the U.S. and Canada to both develop their work and see it fully realized. Since 1999, Native Voices has produced Urban Tattoo, Jump Kiss, The Buz’Gem Blues, Please Do Not Touch the Indians, Kino & Teresa, Stone Heart, The Red Road, The Berlin Blues, SUPER INDIAN, and Teaching Disco Square Dancing to Our Elders: A Class Presentation. In addition, Native Voices has held over 70 workshops and public staged readings of new plays by Native American playwrights featuring Native American actors.

Native Voices at the Autry produces under an Equity contract and is a member of LA Stage Alliance; a member theater of TYA/USA, the national organization for Theater for Young Audiences; and a Constituent of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for the American theater.

Young Native Voices: Theater Education Project
(Formerly Native Voices Young Playwrights Project)

For the past seven years, Young Native Voices: Theater Education Project has provided workshops and residencies for Native American youths at the Southern California Indian Center and the American Indian Clubhouse. Playwrights are paired with professional mentors for an intensive playwriting or theater workshop, culminating in public staged readings of their plays. To date, forty-five new plays have been written as part of the project. In 2005, Young Native Voices expanded to include reservation outreach. That year, Native Voices theater artists and mentors were in residence at the Coeur d'Alene Schitsu'umsh Reservation in Idaho, working with students to create and perform ten 10-minute plays at six different venues, including the University of Idaho, the Coeur d'Alene Reservation, North Idaho College, and the Museum of Arts and Culture. In 2006, they were in residence for a month at the Sycuan Reservation in San Diego County, where they worked with thirty-seven students from the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation. Students participated in daily theater workshops and created a full production of three traditional Kumeyaay stories featuring Kumeyaay language, song, and dance.

Reservation Outreach

In 2005, the Native Voices Young Playwrights Project was held for the first time outside Los Angeles, traveling to the Coeur d'Alene Reservation in Idaho. On November 11, 2005, Native American Stewardship Council (NASC) member Jeanne Givens sat down with Duane King, executive director of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, Scott Kratz, the Autry National Center's director of programs, and Marlene Head, associate director of publications, to talk about the students' experiences. To read the full transcript of that conversation click here.

Annual Playwrights Retreat & Festival of New Plays

Each year, a select number of beginning, emerging, and established Native playwrights are invited to participate in a weeklong retreat in Southern California. Playwrights are paired with professional directors, dramaturgs, actors, and designers to further the development of one of their works. The week culminates in a staged reading of each of the plays for a public audience. Selected playwrights receive an honorarium, round trip airfare to California, plus lodging. Past retreats have been held at the Autry National Center, Los Angeles; University of California, Los Angeles; Occidental College, Los Angeles; San Diego State University, San Diego; and the La Jolla Playhouse, La Jolla. Please click here for information on how to apply to this event.

New Play Commission

Chosen from among a distinguished group of Native American playwrights, the commissioned playwright will visit the collections of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of the American West, and the Institute for Study of the American West at the Autry National Center to further inform a new play on a specific topic for Native Voices at the Autry. A commissioned playwright receives an honorarium and an invitation to participate in the 2008 Playwrights Retreat and Festival of New Plays. Please download our 2008/2009 Call for Scripts for more information.

Past Commissions

Marie Clements / 2004 play commission,
Tombs of the Vanishing Indian

Rhiana Yazzie / 2005 and 2006 play commission,
Wild Horses

Arigon Starr / 2006 and 2007 play commissions,
SUPER INDIAN and The Further Adventures of SUPER INDIAN

Larissa FastHorse / 2007 play commission in conjunction with the Los Angeles History Project, Serra Springs

Native Voices at the Autry Staff

RANDY REINHOLZ (Choctaw) / PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR and co-creator of Native Voices at the Autry. He has directed plays across the US and Canada including The Rez Sisters, The Waiting Room, Hedda Gabler, The Cherry Orchard, Proof, Speed the Plow, The Glass Menagerie, Desire Under The Elms and numerous productions of Shakespeare plays. For Native Voices at the Autry, he's directed and produced Urban Tattoo and Equity productions of Jump Kiss, Stone Heart, The Red Road, The Buz'Gem Blues, The Berlin Blues, and Please Do Not Touch the Indians; executive produced Kino & Teresa, SUPER INDIAN, Teaching Disco Square Dancing to Our Elders, and Salvage. He received a BA from William Jewell College and an MFA from Cornell University. This March, he will be honored with the Citation of Achievement from William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. The citation honors alumni who have achieved distinction in their chosen spheres of endeavor and who have exhibited values of a liberal arts education and of WJC; it is the highest honor bestowed upon WJC alumni. He is on the Board of Directors for TYA/USA, the Advisory Committee for the Native Theater Festival at the Public Theatre, and a member of The National Theatre Conference. He is a tenured professor at San Diego State University in the School of Theater, Television, and Film and on faculty for American Indian Studies. In 2007, after ten years as Head of Acting he was named the Director of the School of Theatre, Television, and Film at San Diego State University.

JEAN BRUCE SCOTT / PRODUCING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR and co-creator of Native Voices at the Autry. She has spent fifteen years developing new plays, including more than fifty by Native American playwrights. At Native Voices, she has produced eleven New Play Festivals; five Playwrights Retreats; over eighty play readings; and twelve new plays, including Equity productions of The Baby Blues, Jump Kiss, Stone Heart, The Red Road, The Buz'Gem Blues, The Berlin Blues, Please Do Not Touch the Indians, Kino & Teresa, SUPER INDIAN, Teaching Disco Square Dancing to Our Elders, Salvage and Métis playwright Marie Clements' Now Look What You Made Me Do and Urban Tattoo. She has been instrumental in creating the Native Radio Theater Project (NRT), a collaboration between Native Voices at the Autry and Native American Public Telecommunications producing new radio plays including The Best Place to Grow Pumpkins, Melba's Medicine, Why Opossum's Tail is Bare, The Peach Seed, and the pilot and ten episodes of SUPER INDIAN. Next up for NRT is The Red Road starring Arigon Starr and directed by the legendary Dirk Maggs.

DAVID BURTON / MANAGING DIRECTOR has been with the Autry since 1998. He is currently the Director of Government Affairs and Special Projects, focusing on securing funds from various government sources through competitive grants and legislative appropriations and promoting the Autry National Center with elected officials and the community. In addition, he serves as contributing editor to Convergence magazine and is responsible for a variety of institutional communications. He helped launch Native Voices at the Autry and has been a member of its executive committee since its inception. He is also the board chair for City Garage, a small theater company in Santa Monica specializing in contemporary European plays. A writer, his short fiction, poetry, and criticism have appeared in various publications.

RICH DEELY / INTERIM SENIOR MANAGER has been with the Autry since March of 2008. Prior to joining Native Voices at the Autry, he originally served as Senior Manager for Education and Programs, developing and overseeing public programming at the museum, as well as supervising both public programs and education staff. In the past, he has worked as a classroom teacher and a fund-raiser. For the past thirteen years, he has worked exclusively in museums, developing and implementing successful youth programming and community initiatives, serving on exhibition development teams, as well as training and supervising both docents and paid floor staff. He has a B.A both in History and Communications and Theatre from the University of Notre Dame, as well as a Masters in Museum Education from Bank Street College in New York City.   

CARLENNE LACOSTA / LITERARY MANAGER served as the Project Coordinator and Teaching Artist for Young Native Voices: Theatre Education Project at Sycuan in 2006 and returned in 2007 as a Teaching Artist. She has participated in USC’s MFA Play Projects “Under Construction” (2007) and “Blueprints” (2008). Also in 2008, she helped coordinate the Annual Conference for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA); was the Session Co-Chair for the panel “Young Native Voices: Theatre Education Project at Sycuan” at the AATE Conference; and served as a panelist for the panel "Strangers in the Night" at the ATHE Conference. Dramaturgy credits include: the World Premieres of The House of Chaos and Lord Derby’s Giant Eland (both of which she also co-produced); Electricidad, The Cherry Orchard, Romeo and Juliet, The Laramie Project (2003 Patté Award), Skin, Hamlet, Angels in America, and Nickel and Dimed. She is a member of the LMDA and is a MA candidate in Theatre Arts at SDSU.

Native Voices at the Autry Advisory Council Members

Tonantzín Carmelo (Gabrielino Tongva, Mexica) is an award-winning actress and a Screen Actors Guild nominee for her lead role in Steven Spielberg’s miniseries Into the West. Numerous theater, television, and film credits including Imprint, a supernatural thriller produced by Chris Eyre and Linn Productions.

Duane Champagne  (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa) professor of sociology at UCLA and from 1991 to 2002 director of the university’s American Indian Studies Center.  Dr. Champagne has authored or edited over 100 publications and was editor of the American Indian Culture and Research Journal from 1986 to 2003.

José Cruz González  is a playwright, director, and professor of theater at CSU Los Angeles.  He  has written for PAZ, the Emmy Award nominated television series produced by Discovery Kids for The Learning Channel and was a recipient of a 2004 TCG/Pew National Theatre Residency grant.  He is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, TYA/USA, and an Associate Artist with Cornerstone Theater Company and Childsplay. 

Scott Kratz is currently the vice president for education at the National Building Museum, leading the Public Programs and Youth Education departments.  He served as director of programs at the Autry National Center from 1999 to 2005, overseeing the development of Native Voices at the Autry and serving as producer or associate producer for its Equity productions.

Oliver Mayer is an internationally-produced playwright, and assistant professor of dramatic writing at USC School of Theatre.  He is the author of numerous plays, including Joe Louis Blues, produced at the Tiffany Theaters and LATC in Los Angeles, and Blade to the Heat, which has been performed in acclaimed productions around the world.

Bill Partlan is associate professor, directing, at Arizona State University and the artistic director of Triple Espresso LLC in Minneapolis. He has directed for National Public Radio’s Earplay series and is known for his work with new plays and playwrights like Alan Ball, Lee Blessing, and John Patrick Shanley.

Kalani Queypo: (Blackfeet, Hawaiian) is an actor, writer, director, and producer. Acting includes roles in the Oscar-nominated film, The New World, and the Emmy Award-winning Into The West. He has written and directed his first short film, Ancestor Eyes, winning the following Awards: RIIFF, AOF, 2nd Place at TRMF, and the IF USA, Indie Fest USA.

Paula Starr is the executive director of the Southern California Indian Center.  An enrolled member in the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, she has experience as a professional educator with a background in theater.

Marjorie Tanin  (Tewa, Hopi, and Kiowa)  is an actor, casting/technical advisor, and a consultant on television programs and feature films dealing with indigenous subjects.  She is former co-chair of the Native American Subcommittee of the Screen Actors Guild.