Set between the towering walls of the Grand Canyon, a crew of 13 men battered by the crashing waves and treacherous journey are prepared to be the stars of TheatreMcLean’s next showcase.

TheatreMcLean’s Men on Boats is gearing up to be an immersive experience with a spin on the true story of John Wesley Powell’s 1869 journey into the Grand Canyon. This production is especially unique because the men aboard the boats aren’t men at all—the cast is all female, setting out to tell the story through the lens of social commentary.

“It’s a satire piece because it is about the voyage to the Grand Canyon, and all the people on this expedition were men. Mostly non-white or non-male actors play these characters—those who never would have been able to go on that expedition [at that time],” said senior Lila Binder, who plays the role of Frank Goodman.

Casting female actors for male roles gives the actors the opportunity to branch out and play characters that they may not have tried before.

“It’s difficult to play a man,” Binder said. “There’s a lot of physicality and voice work that goes into it, but we’re working it out.”

In the show, 10 explorers undertake the expedition to chart the Green and Colorado rivers for President Ulysses S. Grant. The men are led by John Wesley Powell, a Civil War veteran who has only one arm and is a personal friend of the president. Throughout the journey, the men face dangerous conditions, waning supplies and dwindling numbers, but they see their hard work pay off as they map the land and claim whatever they step foot on.

Men on Boats explores the true complexities of humanity through the story’s primary plot—the expedition. While the men believe they’re acting for the greater good, the play highlights the contrast between the work the men put into their journey and their ignorance by acknowledging how they disregarded thousands of years of history already built by the Native communities.

“[In the story], the men talk a lot about how they’re the first government-sanctioned expedition, but they weren’t the first people to see those lands,” Binder said. “The Native Americans had been living there for centuries, but [the men] were naming all the landmarks after themselves.”

The themes discussed in the play are relevant in today’s society as well.

“The men were hailed as heroes, but they’re not exactly the heroes we thought of them to be,” TheatreMcLean director Phillip Reid said. “They’re obsessed with putting their names on stuff to make their mark. It’s wild that right now, certain people in power are wanting to put their names on stuff too just for their own egos.
So I think this play is actually poignant and came out at the right time.”

Beyond taking a unique perspective on the story, TheatreMcLean is stepping away from its usual setting. Instead of performing in the auditorium, the show will take place in the school’s black box theater.

“For the winter show, I really wanted a small, intensive black box show,” Reid said. “I was trying to find a show that would fit in that space and would be different from any of the shows that we’ve done in the past. [Men on Boats] has always been in my bag of possible shows, and so when this year came around, I knew I wanted a play that was a little bit more ensemble-based”

Black box productions are more intimate than a traditional stage play, given how much smaller the room is. The audience is seated much closer to the actors, making the way students approach their acting very different from normal theater.

“When you’re in the black box, you have to be even more on top of it because the audience is closer to you,” said junior Lily Kales, who plays the role of Powell. “[The audience] can see every small movement, so there’s no room for hesitation.”

Because the black box does not follow a traditional stage setup and design, the crew is able to experiment with more creative sets.

“I just always had the idea that it’d be so awesome if [the audience] could walk into the black box and just feel the vastness of the Grand Canyon and feel the vastness of the cliffs,” Reid said. “It definitely is a big project, but I thought it’d be really cool to just make it as immersive as possible.”

The set crew and set decoration crew teamed up to build the canyon walls from wood, chicken wire and papier-mâché, which creates the rocky appearance of a canyon.

“We have two-and-a-half-foot deep walls on each side to make the black box much more concise, and we’ve added 16-foot tall walls on top of those to make rock walls that imitate the Grand Canyon,” said junior Garrett Hodder, co-head of set.

Building a set as extensive as the canyon structure required a significant amount of time and effort.

“It took around four days of work [over winter break],” Hodder said. “We worked eight-hour days [during that time] and [also during] tech class, with around three people working on the set. The cave that I built and prototyped in the front of the black box for the audience to enter through is probably the most difficult set I’ve built.”

In addition to the canyon, the set crew also constructed three “boats,” which are benches on wheels with outer casings held up by the actors. Their unique construction allows the actors to pilot their boats around the black box theater, giving them the appearance of operating on water.

As the cast and crew prepare for the showcase, TheatreMcLean expects to put on a performance like no other, with messages that are still relevant to this day. TheatreMcLean will perform Men on Boats from Feb. 13-15.

“I hope the audience learns from this play that there’s not just one way to cast theater,” Kales said. “[Through the story, we hope] everyone is able to see themselves in all different kinds of roles.”