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‘City of Roses’
Volume XLV
Number 33
Athletes Make
Olympic History
Allen Temple
Rebuilding
Minority firsts
dominate this
year’s games
Historic church
kicks off remodel
after fire
See story, page 4
See Local News, page 3
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • August 17, 2016
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
photo by J enny G raham , o reGon S hakeSpeare F eStival .
Tinman (Rodney Gardiner), Scarecrow (J. Cameron Barnett) and Lion (Christiana Clark) bid farewell to Dorothy (Ashley D. Kelley) in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival pro-
duction of ‘The Wiz.’
O piniOnated
J udge
by J udGe
d arleen
o rteGa
The Oregon Shakespeare Fes-
tival’s outdoor Elizabethan stage
features plays this summer and fall
that are all are worth seeing, and
together they advance the Ashland
festival’s work in practicing art as
social justice.
The angst and seething under-
currents of “Hamlet” are con-
veyed not only through a fine
performance by Danforth Comins
in the title role, but also through
music and smart casting. Not
Art as
Polonius (who has long served
Hamlet’s
family),
Polonius’
daughter Ophelia (the sometime
love whom Hamlet casts off so
coldly), and her brother Laertes
(Hamlet’s friend and rival). The
dynamic between this trio and
their troubled relationships with
Hamlet and his family resonates
strongly with typical experiences
of people of color, including the
contrasting vantage points of dif-
ferent generations, and deepens
this production’s tragic sensibility.
“The Winter’s Tale” is staged
to his privileged social location is from the lens of Asian and Asian
underscored by casting three fine American experience, affording a
African American actors -- Der- too-rare opportunity to see folks
rick Lee Weeden, Jennie Green-
C ontinued on p aGe 5
berry, and Tramell Tillman -- as
Social Justice
A cheer for Ashland plays and racial progress
strictly tied to one time period, the
production uses live rock guitar
music (via an onstage heavy met-
al musician) to gird its moods and
questions; the music broods over
contact with the dead and also the
accumulation of unaddressed mis-
takes and questions that undo all
the characters in the end.
Meanwhile, Hamlet’s blindness