Off the Rails (play)

Off the Rails is a stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure by Randy Reinholz, a Choctaw Native American playwright. The play was written in 2015, and inspired by Reinholz's wife and co-founder of the Native Voices theatre company at the Autry Museum of the American West, Jean Bruce Scott.

Although Off the Rails follows the plot of Measure for Measure, infamous for being one of Shakespeare's problem plays, the power struggles between the characters help rather than hurt the play's ability to send a powerful message by accentuating the racist treatment of Native Americans. Reinholz utilizes specific projection images and traditional Native American tribal songs and language in the script of the play in order to make a political statement about the horrors of Indian boarding schools.

Set in the mid 1880s, the play opens with an active main street featuring an Indian boarding school/jail, Stewed Prunes Saloon, and brothel. Momaday, a love-struck 16 year–old Pawnee Native American, and Grandfather, also Pawnee, introduce their story of removal from their homeland Kit Tuk Creek to Genoa, Nebraska. This scene leads into the love story between Momaday and Caitlin, a 16-year-old Irish orphan. They secretly meet in the street to talk, occasionally in the forbidden Pawnee language. It is revealed that Caitlin is pregnant with Momaday’s child and the couple have been married in ‘Pawnee way’, rather than Christian ceremony, thereby casting their intercourse as an unlawful act in Genoa.

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