This weekend, the Performing Arts Department will present a play with a rather confusing tagline: “Men on Boats” opens Feb. 21, yet text by the play’s title on the display outside Edison Theatre proclaim, “No men. No boats.”

Directed by Andrea Urice, “Men on Boats” is a 2015 play by playwright Jaclyn Backhaus. It shows the trip led by John Wesley Powell down the Green and Colorado rivers in the late 1860s and early 1870s through the Grand Canyon, but with a twist. The play calls for casting “racially diverse” women or actors of an underrepresented gender. Hence, no men.

Madison Lee, a senior playing John Colton Sumner, the leader of the first boat on the expedition, said that she “liked how the show was taking an American tale, but with a twist. Instead of cisgender white men, the cast features anything but that.”

That is part of the magic of “Men on Boats,” a play that brings diversity to a historical event by reexamining a moment populated solely by white men

“The cast is an amazing group of women,” said senior Lucie Kirk, who plays Seneca Howland, the brother of the team’s map maker. As for the boats, “Naturally we can’t row real boats of the Edison stage, so I suppose people will just have to see the show to find out exactly how we’ve made it work!”

“It definitely has been a challenge trying to figure out how to row, swim and capsize on stage,” Lee agreed, “but [it has] also been very exciting and fun.”

The play is also an opportunity for education as many audience members may not be familiar with the specifics of the history that the play is based on.

It’s “an adventure that takes the viewer on a journey, [as] they may not be familiar with this part of history,” Lee said. “Many people understand how explorers mapped the west, but don’t know the dangers and risks those explorers took to achieve this.”

Lee described her character as “an adventure man who dreams of moving up to the Yukon after the exploration is over” but who is “more chilled out” in terms of personality. Kirk, meanwhile, plays a character who is “definitely a little cold” to others but who has a very close relationship with his older brother, Oramel (sophomore Jenise Sheppard).

Kirk said that she “think[s] it’s a really fun show and a great acting challenge” and that, after reading the play, she was also “so intrigued by how they were going to achieve the technical challenges of the show.”

Exactly how those challenges were overcome is as yet unclear; until the show opens on Friday, it seems the solutions will remain a mystery.

Still, Lee says that the story is the most important aspect of the play. With regards to both the casting decisions and lack of boats, Lee said, “How it is done and who it is done by does not change the message or impact our viewership. In fact, we more closely follow these characters due to these changes.”

“I’m just excited for the audience to take the journey with us each time we perform the show,” Kirk said. “They are right up on stage with us, mere feet away, so I hope they feel like they’re part of the show when they are watching it.”

Lee agreed, adding that she is “excited for the audience to get to know these characters and think about Backhaus’ work and what it means to them [to have] an all-female cast.”

“Men on Boats” opens Friday, Feb. 21, at the Edison Theatre and runs through March 1. Friday and Saturday performances will be at 8 p.m., and Sunday’s will be at 2 p.m. Tickets are available on the Edison website and at the box office and are free to students.