Photo Caption: Serenity Mariana, Haley Wong, Lark White, Anissa Marie Griego, and Rebecca Jimenez Photo by Ahron R. Foster

The play, a co-production of the Atlantic Theater Company and Rattlestick Theater, marks the Off-Broadway debut of both its creator, Eliana Theologides Rodriguez, and its director, Miranda Cornell, whose bio notes that she has a "passion for the dialectic, the sincere, and the strange." A perfect match, then, between director and playwright, since Indian Princesses embodies all of these.

The title, which perhaps is intended to arouse indignation among those who are vigilant for acts of cultural appropriation, refers to an actual program offered by the YMCA from the mid-1950s to early in the 2000s. Its purpose was to establish a bonding experience for fathers and their pre-teen daughters through a variety of activities like crafts, nature walks, and camping trips. Problematically, the program organized itself around elements of Native American culture without the remotest regard for origin, meaning, or the history behind them: tribes, pow-wows, the creation of dreamcatchers, and the like. An earlier incarnation was called "Y-Indian Guides," which focused on father-son activities; you can see, then, the intention, at least, that led to the "Indian Princesses" model. But as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

That likely was the impetus for Indian Princesses, especially since we are informed in a note from the playwright that she herself participated in just such a program in 2008. But if the play were only about unpacking an embedded grudge against this "encapsulation of my own relationship with my identity," as Rodriguez puts it, referring to her Yaqui and Tewa roots, the events depicted here would seem to be aimed at low-hanging fruit that fell off the tree in a self-correcting reimagining of its mission shortly after the playwright's experience. Distancing itself from its origins, it reemerged and continues to operate as "Adventure Guides."

Getting down to the plot, the play focuses at times on the father figures (a mix of fathers, step-fathers, adoptive fathers, and one grandfather) and at other times on the five girls who are the participants in Indian Princesses. The story unfolds in and around a community center located somewhere in the Midwest in the summer of 2008. It's here, when things shift to the interactions among the characters, that things get more complicated and, therefore, more interesting.

To begin with, all of the men are white, while their daughters represent a variety of races and ethnic identities. Played by Ben Beckley, Greg Keller, Pete Simpson, and Frank Wood, the guys come off as clueless dads who don't really understand their daughters. In fact, they spend more time with each other than with the girls as they trip over themselves in liberal clichés of the "I don't see color" variety, show themselves to be overprotective to the extent that they refuse to acknowledge their daughters' identities, or they stand at the ready to lecture on historic racism.

But then there are the girls. Andi (Rebecca Jimenez) is half-white, half-Mexican; Samantha (Haley Wong) is half-white, half-Japanese; sisters Lily (Anissa Marie Griego) and Hazel (Serenity Mariana) are, like the playwright, a mix of Yaqui and Tewa; and Maisey (Lark White) is Black. You can almost catch their eyes rolling whenever the dads enter the picture, but they blossom when they are with each other.

And, ultimately, this is the play's greatest strength, the creation of a group of girls from a wide range of backgrounds who are wise beyond their years and ready to seek understanding of who they are, with or without the help of the dads. It's not difficult to envision where they will go with their lives, both as independent young women and as rocks of support for one another.

Indian Princesses meanders a bit too much among its three threads (i.e. a satirical lashing out at cultural appropriation, the cluelessness of the father figures, and the tight relationship that develops among the multiracial, multiethnic girls), but it is nonetheless a compelling tale, both of a messy present and a hopeful future.