Grandma Stories told by Randy Reinholz

About This Event

Grandma Stories Told by Randy Reinholz

In this poignant and sharply funny solo performance, Choctaw playwright and theatremaker Randy Reinholz invites us into a memory-play that bends time like memory itself. Reinholz’s self-effacing narrator, caught in the glittering but hollow glow of Hollywood, turns inward to unravel the stories from his youth that shaped him. Embodying over 20 characters, what begins in the raw grit of Native American life—poverty, relocation, dog bites, and identity confusion—evolves into a charming theatrical journey of resilience, humor, and transformation. With a storyteller’s wit and an artist’s craft, Reinholz transforms trauma into art, pain into laughter, and personal history into a shared experience. GRANDMA STORIES is an evening of intimate, funny, and deeply human storytelling.

About Randy Reinholz

Randy Reinholz, an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is the Founding Artistic Director 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 a producer, actor, director, playwright, professor, 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. He has produced 35+ new scripts and directed 75+ plays in the United States, Australia, Mexico, Great Britain, and Canada.

During his tenure, Native Voices presented 300+ workshops and readings of Native plays with artists from more than 100 distinct tribal nations, with work appearing at OSF, La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Globe, The Public Theater, Perseverance Theatre, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Montana Rep, The Alaska Native Heritage Center, Arizona Repertory Theatre, numerous universities, and tribal communities.

Awards include Playwrights' Arena's Lee Melville Award, the Ellen Stewart Award for Career Achievement in Professional Theatre, the LA Drama Circle's Gordon Davidson Award, a McKnight Fellowship, a Map Grant, a Ford Foundation Grant, and NEA grants.

He is the immediate past President of the National Theater Conference, a trustee of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, and served as a Council Member for The Dramatist Guild of America. He is a tenured Professor at San Diego State University, where he also served as Director of the School of Theatre, Television, and Film.

This presentation is made possible by the support of Robert K. and Ann J. Powers Chair of the Humanities and the Native American Studies Program at Gonzaga University and the Associated Students of the University of Idaho Centennial Fine Arts Endowment.