experienced as the nightmare of the Middle Passage—young men, women and children packed tightly into dark cargo holds, chained together, suffering from dysentery, fever, malnutrition and brutality—appeared as the dream of returning home. Except that Wallace’s characters chose fugitivity, self-liberation, and Africa over the kindness of white men, the fairness of white law, and the paternalism of England. Indeed, she succeeds in transforming a tale of white bourgeois villainy and white working-class courage into a story that centers on the struggles of black women for freedom and justice.
Set in Bristol, Rhode Island, the first act takes place in 1791, the year of De Wolfe’s trial and the first year of the Haitian Revolution—the massive slave insurrection that not only destroyed slavery on the island but established the first independent black nation in the Western Hemisphere. Act One opens with two lovers, Adjua and Dembi, fugitives from slavery, hustling along Bristol’s docks with dreams of returning to West Africa and raising a free child on soil they can call home. As they await passage on a ship captained by a former slave named Liverpool Joe, they pull what they think is a corpse from the water in search of valuables. The man turns out to be John Cranston—still alive but temporarily devoid of memory. Thus begins a journey that defies summary, whose tragic and prophetic twists and turns can only be experienced on the stage or in the pages that follow.
Suffice it to say, Adjua does bear a child, a girl named Bristol, who appears in Act Two and Act Three as a forty-six-year-old woman. The year is 1837, three decades after the abolition of the slave trade and three years after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. She makes the transatlantic voyage to the Rhode Island port city for which she was named, but from England, not Africa. And the point of her journey was not to seek freedom—at least not at first—but to exact justice. In the brilliant and determined Bristol Waters, the former slaver-turned-senator James De Wolfe will face his reckoning. And in Bristol’s own reckoning with history, death, Africa, ancestors, and the ghost of poet William Blake, she will discover her calling. Bristol’s dialogue with De Wolfe is a veritable masterpiece, a brilliant exposé of the conceits of Enlightenment-era civilization that transmuted people into cargo and capital, that made murder an economic calculation, that cloaked the bloody business of human trafficking in the refined garments of humanitarianism, and that built a paradise from the bones, sinew and sweat of African people. Bristol strips De Wolfe and the entire system naked, exposing his/its true identity: Butcher. Executioner. Criminal.
Wallace’s brilliance is her ability to reveal the system of modern slavery, its consequences and contradictions, without ever representing slaves, the Middle Passage, or the brutal operations of the plantation. While the play stays anchored in the lives and struggles of black women seeking freedom and justice, Wallace is sensitive to the ways in which slavery pulled everyone into its bloody fold: Europeans and Africans, children and adults, women and men, the rich and the dispossessed. Inevitably, a system of industrial-scale kidnapping bound together the Atlantic world—a world comprised of Africans escaping bondage, sailors resisting impressment, laboring women fighting concubinage, masters and owners and managers wrestling with their own dehumanization.
And yet, Wallace avoids the lure of “equivalency,” of treating impressed sailors or the suppressed European laborers as equally oppressed by the Atlantic slave system. John Cranston is neither a hero nor the star of the story—yes, he is victimized, but he is also a victimizer. Likewise, Dembi, Adjua, Liverpool Joe and Bristol are never victims—indeed, they are never slaves. Wallace grasped what most historians have yet to understand: that slaves only existed in the white imagination, and that the African refused to become a “slave”—which is to say a saleable, docile commodity ready and willing to create surplus for her owner. On the contrary, they were the system’s executioners, soldiers of liberty whose hatred of bondage and love of humanity drove them to act, often constructively but sometimes destructively.
So get ready. Batten down the hatches. Throw all assumptions overboard. And prepare for a voyage that will leave you astonished, edified, and at times utterly breathless.
Production History
The world premiere of The Liquid Plain was produced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Bill Rauch, Artistic Director; Cynthia Rider, Executive Director) in Ashland, Oregon, on July 2, 2013. It was directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah. The scenic design was by Brenda Davis, the costume design was by Constanza Romero, the lighting design was by Christopher Akerlind, the sound design and original music were by Victoria Deiorio and the projection and video design were by Alex Koch; the dramaturg was Julie Felise Dubiner and the stage manager was D. Christian Bolender. The cast was:
| ADJUA | June Carryl |
| DEMBI | Kimberly Scott |
| CRANSTON | Danforth Comins |
| BALTHAZAR/WILLIAM BLAKE | Armando Durán |
| LIVERPOOL JOE | Kevin Kenerly |
| BRISTOL | Bakesta King |
| JAMES DE WOLFE | Michael Winters |
| NESBITT | Josiah Phillips |
| GIFFORD | Richard Elmore |
| ENSEMBLE | June Carryl, Kevin Kenerly |
The New York premiere of The Liquid Plain was produced by Signature Theatre (James Houghton, Artistic Director; Erika Mallin, Executive Director) on March 8, 2015. It was directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah. The scenic design was by Riccardo Hernandez, the costume design was by Paul Tazewell, the lighting design was by Thom Weaver, the sound design and original music were by Shane Rettig and the projection design was by Alex Koch; the production stage manager was Cole P. Bonenberger. The cast was:
| ADJUA | Kristolyn Lloyd |
| DEMBI | Ito Aghayere |
| CRANSTON | Michael Izquierdo |
| BALTHAZAR/WILLIAM BLAKE | Karl Miller |
| LIVERPOOL JOE | Johnny Ramey |
| BRISTOL | LisaGay Hamilton |
| JAMES DE WOLFE | Robert Hogan |
| NESBITT | Lance Roberts |
| GIFFORD | Tuck Milligan |
| THE SHADOW | Tara A. Nicolas |
The role of Bristol was originally written for LisaGay Hamilton.
Characters
ADJUA, born in West Africa, early twenties
DEMBI, born into slavery, from Charleston, mid-twenties
CRANSTON, a white sailor, born in American Colonies, early thirties
BALTHAZAR, Irish, United Irishman, thirties
LIVERPOOL JOE, a black sailor, grew up in Liverpool, twenties
BRISTOL, a free black woman, grew up in England, forties
WILLIAM BLAKE, the poet
JAMES DE WOLFE, a former U.S. senator, seventies
NESBITT, an old black sailor
GIFFORD, an old white sailor
THE SHADOW, a presence, the spirit of Adjua’s sister
GUINEA
