“Ten Explorers. Four Boats. One Grand Canyon.”
By Tom PorterIn the summer of 1869, ten white men, led by a one-armed naturalist and Civil War veteran called John Wesley Powell, set off from Wyoming in four boats on a thousand-mile river journey.
Their mission, to “discover” the canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers. By the end of the three-month trip, there were two boats and six men remaining.
This episode, known as the Powell Geographic Expedition, marked the first recorded passage of white men through the whole of the Grand Canyon. It was also the inspiration for the 2017 play Men on Boats, by Jaclyn Backhaus, which views the venture through twenty-first-century eyes, offering a humorous, destabilizing look at history, gender, colonialism, and the legacies of the American West.
The Department of Theater and Dance recently staged a production of the work on the ϳԹվ campus as its 2025 spring play. The show, whose cast members identify as female or non-binary, played to sold-out crowds in Wish Theater over three nights.
Enjoy this slide show of images from the production by photographer Molly Haley (mollyhaley.com).
Sponsored by the Alice Cooper Morse Fund for the Performing Arts, Men on Boats was presented by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC, servicing the Dramatists Play Service collection.