Men on Boats is a gender-bent, anachronistic retelling of John Wesley Powell’s harrowing 1869 expedition, wherein a one-armed captain and a crew of insane yet loyal volunteers set out to chart the course of the Colorado River. The twist? While the expedition consisted of ten men, ten women retell the story in Backhaus’ version.
Runs: March 31 – April 22, 2018
Pay-What-You-Can Previews: March 23 – March 30, 2018
“[MEN ON BOATS] is marvelously destabilizing both as history and theater. The stalwartness and selfishness of the adventurers—their cockiness and cluelessness—become biting satire when sent up by women." —New York Magazine
CRITIC’S PICK! “[a] rollicking history pageant…. MEN ON BOATS starts from the realization that we can never recreate exactly how it was. This play’s perspective is that of a contemporary reader filtering accounts of another age through her own latter-day sensibility...It’s not unlike what Lin-Manuel Miranda is doing in his splendid hip-hop musical, Hamilton.” – Ben Brantley, New York Times
Mentioned in this Post
Dea Hurston New Village Arts Center
2787 State St