Jaclyn Backhaus’ rousing history play Men on Boats, chronicles the 1869 expedition in which John Wesley Powell and his brave crew sailed down the Colorado River to “discover” the Grand Canyon. In the play all the men are played by women, adding a rich layer of commentary that elevates this from being simple entertainment into an essential work of art for our times. Backhaus is a master at writing characters that are accurate to the time in which they live, but also speak larger truths about our current world, such as the nonsensical heterosexual male need to claim land, objects and people as their property, or the eye-roll-inducing notion that men should not allow their feelings to be seen. Under Will Davis’ energetic direction, and the work of the pitch perfect ensemble, Men on Boats is one of the treats of the season.

I spoke to playwright Backhaus about how fitting the show is for today, where she found inspiration, and what she hopes people will take from the show.

I saw the show the same night that Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination for President, and couldn’t help but see how a show like Men on Boats is precisely what we need right now. How has it been to have the show running during this insane political season?

The show’s always been this rallying cry for people to take our American history into a broader context than we usually do. In the last few weeks it’s been empowering to not only get together with the incredible cast and work on the play, but also to celebrate that sense of achievement while it’s happening on a national stage is super cool. I couldn’t have planned it better (laughs).

The show reminded me of Meek’s Cutoff, which is one of the only films about pioneers that I’ve seen in which we come very aware of the fact that women were completely denied any agency during the times when America was expanding. Doing research for the show did you find any instances of women who made discoveries during this time, or were they in fact completely shut off by men?

I think that there are stories of women doing incredible feats, but they are overshadowed or drowned out by stories of white men. My show is telling the story of one of these expeditions, but I hope something people take away from the piece is that it provides the gateway for people to come out of the show wondering about the stories they haven’t heard and go looking for them. In my research I came across a few stories but they didn’t serve my story, for the purposes of my story I kept my research to Powell’s first expedition. Powell went on it twice but the second time around no one who came the first time wanted to come again, it was a completely new cast the second time around. Now I’m sorta hungering to dig a little more and find great stories that feature female characters.

I grew up in Latin America and boys were taught to identify only with male heroes and girls had to only identify with female characters. I think it’s really exciting that we’re finally at a time when boys are allowed to identify with Beyoncé and girls can identify with crazy male explorers. Growing up were you guided to identity with a specific kind of character?

I grew up in a very creative household, my parents approved of my ambitions and dreams. But certainly, this is something we talked about while working on the show, there is an expectation that’s gendered or non-gendered about how we need to fit into societal norms. We talked a lot about not necessarily what it means to identify with these explorers in a gender sense, but what kind of explorers would the actors be. In that sense we freed up and crossed over a threshold, making it less about a gender binary and opening it up to a profession and what your boldness entails. It definitely helped the actors find a deeper truth in these roles, so when they’re playing these roles they’re definitely not “playing men”, but they’re going a little bit further into playing explorers. It challenges the idea of who you’re supposed to look up to, it excites me to think how any kid can dream of being an astronaut, deep sea diver, a paleontologist or a stay-at-home parent, regardless of their gender.

Right on, just last Halloween I got to realize one of my dreams by being the pink Power Ranger for Halloween, and I love it when art allows you to feel like a child again, making you feel that you can leave the theater and go conquer the world afterwards.

Definitely, I gravitate towards writing things that are fun for me to write, they have to engage me in a silly sensibility, which is something child’s play also has. A lot of times I have these big ideas that on the page don’t have all the answers, so I seek collaborators who will ask these questions with me. In a way the way I make my plays is the same way I played as a kid, we all assemble around, collaborate and make something fun for all of us. I think that translates into me wanting to write about these guys, I’m writing another show about a whale who is wandering the seas alone, in that play the composer of the music is onstage in a whale costume. It’s silly fun that speaks to deeper truths because we were all kids once.

But also the show pulls the rug from under us, I was feeling all giddy and then you turn the responsibility over to the audience reminding us it’s our duty to tell history the way we wanna hear it. That sense of combining playful wonder and moral duty,  was that an easy balance to achieve?

First of all I’m really excited that’s what you found in the end of the play. Endings are the hardest thing to write because you wanna tie everything, but you don’t wanna tie it too neatly. I don’t want to be like “here you are message of the play”. What guided me towards the end of the play were the rehearsal questions we had, what we were left with in both the source material and the pages of the play. The stories of the men are lost to history unless you dig very deeply, so I wanted to give it a bit of an air of mystery and charge it with this idea that we can’t, and don’t know everything that’s transpired into culminating in our present. I want the viewer to imbue it with their perception on history, and it was really hard to do, I think I was working on drafts up to three days ago!

Men on Boats is also a fantastic adventure piece. What were some of your favorites growing up?

One of them is this movie about Alaska called Alaska, my little brother used to watch it all the time when I was growing up, it’s about two kids who get lost in the wilderness and Charlton Heston shows up as an evil person. I also liked fantastical adventure stuff like The Chronicles of Narnia, and there are elements in the play that were inspired by The Lord of the Rings. The action of the play is also inspired by old adventure paintings, and The Oregon Trail game.

Men on Boats has been extended through August 21. For tickets and more information click here.