Los Angeles-Nestled in the valley of California 's rugged San Gabriel Mountains, the cream-colored stucco façade of the Autry National Center is a genteel oasis of the past amid the glass-and-steel suburban sprawl of modern-day Southern California .

Two centuries ago, before the discovery of gold in 1849 triggered a population explosion that continues almost unabated today, this arid region was part of the still-untamed American frontier. As the twentieth century dawned, enterprising pioneers of a different sort from the nascent moving picture industry arrived from the east to turn their cameras in the abundant sunshine, spinning celluloid tales of cowboys and Indians that would shape a generation's perceptions of how the west was “won.”

On an atypically clear Southern California day, Jewell alumnus Randy Reinholz has gathered a group of actors and other theater professionals inside the Autry's Wells Fargo Theatre. The final rehearsal is underway for “Please Do Not Touch the Indians,” a new play by Canadian playwright Joseph A. Dandurand. The harrowing memory play, which views the genocide of America 's native people through the highly personal prism of parents coming to terms with the death of a child, is being produced as part of the “Native Voices” program begun by Reinholz and his wife, Jean Bruce Scott, in 1993. The program develops new scripts and gives a creative voice to the Native American community, a subculture that is largely invisible to mainstream audiences. The cause is an important one for the 42-year-old alum from the class of 1984, who is Choctaw and whose maternal grandmother is also a member of the Choctaw nation.

Reinholz is a calm eye in this hurricane of activity. Whether it's a balky sound system or an awkward bit of stage movement, the even-tempered Reinholz is clearly the “go-to” guy in this creative assemblage. During a break in rehearsals, he took time to reminisce about his days at Jewell and to share his vision for the Native Voices program.

“I came to Jewell on a football scholarship,” says Reinholz, who spent his summers building houses while he was growing up in rural southwest Missouri . “My roommate was also a football player from my high school in Camdenton, and he was taking a winter term theater class. It sounded interesting, so I decided to take the course too.”

Reinholz soon found himself spending more and more time around the theater department, where under the tutelage of communication professor Kim Harris he did everything from writing to directing to performing and set construction. “Sometimes I was the messenger, and sometimes I was Romeo. It was a really nice atmosphere, and these people were interested in lots of things. They also had a lot of cool tools,” he recalls with a smile.

Reinholz credits Harris and English professor and performing arts program founder Richard Harriman with opening his eyes to the world of the arts.

“We grew up poor,” he remembers of his childhood. The son of a bi-vocational charismatic preacher and homebuilder, his horizons extended only as far as the surrounding Ozark hilltops. “When I arrived at Jewell, I was a real hayseed. The first play I ever went to was one that I was in. My idea of the world before William Jewell was my hometown and the other towns where we played football games. I had gotten by on charm and my skills as an athlete. But at Jewell that wasn't enough. I worked hard and learned how to read analytically and to write. And I tried to go to every one of the performances in the Jewell Fine Arts series while I was in school. The professors there gave you a sense that they really cared about you as a person. The liberal arts education extended me as a person and enlarged my worldview. It really changed my life.”

After receiving his degree in communication from Jewell, Reinholz went on to the graduate acting program at Cornell University , where he received his M.F.A. in acting in 1988. He moved to California that year to take an acting job at San Diego's Old Globe Theater, where he was cast in a number of productions by the company's artistic director Jack O'Brien, the Tony Award-winning director of such Broadway hits as “The Full Monty” and “Hairspray.” Television guest roles in shows like “ China Beach ” followed and eventually led to a regular role on the NBC daytime drama “Days of Our Lives,” where he played the character of Adam Scott for a year.

“They're always bringing in characters to shake up the marriages of the regulars on the daytime shows,” Reinholz says. “I think I dated everyone in Salem . Daytime is a demanding job, and you have to be really good at your craft. My character was someone whose female side was in conflict with his male side, and he ended up as a cross-dressing stalker who was in love with one of the show's leading women. He eventually wound up being sent to jail.”

Reinholz also met his future wife and Native Voices collaborator, Jean Bruce Scott, in 1989 while making the rounds of casting offices in Los Angeles . An actress who starred in the television series “Airwolf” and “Days Of Our Lives” and who had recurring roles on “Magnum P.I.,” “St. Elsewhere,” “Newhart” and “Matlock,” Scott later landed the role of Nurse Colleen in ABC's “Port Charles,” a spin-off of the long-running “ General Hospital .” They were married a year to the day after their first meeting.

Reinholz continued to appear in episodic television, and in 1991 he was cast in a leading role in “Dead Space,” a low-budget horror film produced by the infamous independent filmmaker Roger Corman.

“It was basically a rip-off of ‘Alien,' ” Reinholz says of the movie, which also featured Marc Singer and “Malcolm in the Middle” dad Bryan Cranston. “My function was to seduce the woman psychiatrist on the spaceship. It was a really low-budget feature, but we were all happy as cats to be working. I had come to Hollywood to be in the movies, so it was great.”

Following a series of guest artist appointments at California State University , Santa Monica College and Duke University , Reinholz landed a tenure-track position on the faculty of Illinois State University in 1993. It was here that the Native Voices program was born as a play-reading festival aimed at allowing faculty members to evaluate scripts with Native American subject matter.

“Since it was difficult to evaluate the material on the page alone, the production committee chose five scripts to be part of a staged reading series,” Reinholz recalls. “We hoped that we might find a script that would be appropriate for the students to perform. But we were surprised to find that the scripts were filled with issues that resonated with local audiences who were not predominantly Native American.”

For several years the program continued with festivals and workshops of staged readings at universities and theatres across the country. When Reinholz was appointed to the faculty at San Diego State University in 1997, he began working to find a permanent home for Native Voices. He eventually met with program officers at the Autry Museum , which was in the process of mounting “Powerful Images: Portrayals of Native America,” an exhibit that examined the representation of Native Americans within their own cultures and by others.

“One thing that was missing from the exhibition was the ongoing presence of contemporary Native Americans,” Reinholz says. “Living people don't belong in an exhibition.”

Reinholz proposed adding a Native Voices production of playwright Marie Clements' “Urban Tattoo” to the exhibition schedule in 1999. The play was so well received that Reinholz and the Autry decided to collaborate on the Native American Theatre Initiative, a three-year pilot project that would include play readings, workshops and the production of a script developed through the Native Voices program at the Autry. In 2003, the Autry and Native Voices agreed to an ongoing Native American theatre program that would include play workshops and staged readings, one annual production with a professional Actors Equity contract, an educational outreach program for Native American youth in the greater Los Angeles area, an annual new play commission and periodic playwrights retreats.

“Native Voices at the Autry is truly a tremendous opportunity for old writers and young writers to first hear their words and then perhaps to see them on stage,” says playwright Joseph A. Dandurand, author of “Please Do Not Touch the Indians” and a Kwantlen Indian from the Kwantlen First Nation in British Columbia. “For me, the process lifts me up and makes me wish to write and say more. I feel good about Native Voices and Randy. He has done amazing things with very little.”

Reinholz and Scott, who is executive producer for Native Voices projects, recently met with staff members of the Kennedy Center and The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington , D.C. , about the possibility of launching Native Voices programs on a national level. Publication of an anthology of scripts produced through the Native Voices program is planned for 2006. They are also creating an international course that explores indigenous theatre from around the world to be held at Griffith University in Brisbane , Australia . The program will bring together Native American, Canadian First Nations and Australian Aboriginal theater artists to explore myth and physicality in storytelling and theater.

“Movies like ‘Smoke Signals,' ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence' and ‘Whale Rider' have demonstrated the broad appeal that stories from indigenous people have,” Reinholz says. “What is unique about these stories is that they haven't been heard before and they are coming from voices that were silenced for so long. They are in many ways like Greek drama or Shakespeare. These stories draw on ancient traditions and myths to shed light on complex and timeless issues of governance, family and evolving social questions.”

While providing production and acting opportunities for the Native American community, Native Voices has allowed Reinholz to reconnect on a personal level with his own heritage.

“I didn't grow up around other Choctaws,” Reinholz says. “My grandmother was forbidden to speak Choctaw by her father, but she was a great storyteller when she was around us. She had a fondness for a simple way of life, but I think she was unaware that a lot of her ways were Indian ways. Looking back, I have really begun to make that connection.

“Native American people sometimes feel like they live in isolation. But theater is a collaborative process. When Native American people come together, their culture is handed down. The pow-wow is the traditional way that Aboriginal cultures have come together for music, dancing and storytelling. Theater is just one evolution of that tradition.”

For Reinholz, the work is also about leaving a legacy. “There is a strong belief in the native world that this life is not the only life–that we stay around and help others that come after us. It's my hope that Native Voices will in some way be of help to the generations to come.”

“Kino and Teresa” has been chosen as the 2005 Native Voices at the Autry Equity production. The show will be staged March 4-20 at the Autry National Center's Wells Fargo Theatre in Los Angeles. The play, by James Lujan of the Taos Pueblo, is based on Shakespeare's “Romeo and Juliet.” It provides a look into the hearts and minds of two warring communities: the Taos Pueblo and their Spanish conquerors in 17th-century Santa Fe.