September II, 2013___________________________ ^orthutÖ (í)bsf Wer__________________________ Page 9 East County Beaverton North Portland Dembi (Kimberly Scott, left) and Adjua (June Carry!) find a book in the pocket o f the man (Danforth Comins) they've pulled from the sea in ‘The Liquid Plain,' now p i ay ini at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. Photo by Jenny Graham. Oregon Shakespeare Festival wades in where angels fear to tread It's hard to imagine a setting for a play more challenging and complex than the slave trade. It's a history that we as a culture carry in our collective DNA; our very economic system was built, quite literally, on the backs of human beings who had been kidnapped and trans ported under unimaginable conditions into ' I \ lives that explicitly denied their status as hu man beings. We have barely begun to scratch the surface in our collective consciousness about the implications of this past for our present. continued on page 16