BrittneyLove Smith

Alex Rhyan

Alumni of the Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department are part of the “crew” bringing the Chicago premiere of the Off-Broadway hit Men on Boats to the American Theatre Company, 1909 W. Byron, Chicago, where the show runs January 6-February 12. The cast includes BrittneyLove Smith ’11, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s Acting Program, and Alex Rhyan ’15, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Theatre, is the show’s technical director.

BrittneyLove Smith (left) and Kelli Simpkins in reheasal for “Men on Boats” (Photo: Logan Jones)

The play, a 2016 Off-Broadway triumph, dramatizes a perilous real-life 1869 expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon — the U.S. government’s first sanctioned expedition in the American West. The ten-person crew of the historic, action-packed event was all male, but this play, written by Jaclyn Backhaus and directed by Will Davis, gender-flips the story with a genderfluid cast of women and folks otherwise defined in order to satirize male weakness (empty swagger, imperialist land-lust, concealed cowardice, self-mythologizing) while also celebrating the adventurers’ genuine heroism. 

For tickets, call 773-409-4125 or click here.