You might furrow your brow when the cast of “Men on Boats” arrives on stage.

Because they’re all women. The casting decision for the show, set in 1869, is on purpose, of course, and meant to satirize the machismo of intrepid male explorers of yore who set out across our great country to discover land that had already been discovered and lived on for thousands of years.

“It’s satirical of masculinity and this time of colonization,” said director Matt Phillips. “It would give it an entirely different tone if it was done by men. It just glorifies this history of men who were brave men and Civil War veterans and heroes, but also contributed to the colonization of the West.”

Playwright Jaclyn Backhaus adapted “Men on Boats” from American explorer John Wesley Powell’s journal entries of the American West in the 1800s. The 2017 play follows Powell and his crew as they wind their way down the Green and Colorado rivers toward the then unknown Grand Canyon as they attempt to create the first official map of the region.

The explorers joke, reminisce and argue about directions and plans. Boats capsize here and there and food and surveyor’s instruments are lost overboard. The way the crew looks at show’s end is quite a bit different than when they first embarked.

University of Colorado Colorado Springs Theatre Department will open the show Friday at Ent Center for the Arts. It runs through May 5.

Cast and crew are UCCS students, along with Phillips, who will graduate this spring with a bachelor’s in theater. It’s his first time directing a big show for a paying audience, but hopefully not his last. The Colorado Springs resident, who graduated from Fountain-Fort Carson High School, hopes to someday earn a master’s of fine arts in directing.

“I went into theater wanting to be a storyteller,” he said. “I liked the liveness and energy of it and community. I started acting and doing stage design and soon after it became a dream to become a director. You can see something come to life that is fully built from your vision.”

Doing “Men on Boats” was Phillips’ idea. UCCS theater students can propose a play and if it’s approved and there’s space in the schedule they can produce it.

“Half the play is done on boats going down the river, going over rapids, tackling waterfalls,” he said. “How do you put that on stage is the big question, which is very exciting to me.”

And the show is not a dry piece of historical reenactment. It’s a jolly time.

“The tone is comic, but never cute or camp. And ultimately, you feel, the play respects its bold if fallible pioneers, in all their natural bravery and fearfulness,” wrote New York Times critic Ben Brantley in 2015.