Freedom Singer

Co-created by Khari Wendell McClelland and Andrew Kushnir. Performed by McClelland. Directed by Kushnir. Until Feb. 11 at Crow’s Theatre, 345 Carlaw Ave. crowstheatre.com or 647-341-7390

For reasons that don’t need pointing out, many Canadians pride themselves right now on being citizens of a country that welcomes the vulnerable with open arms and borders. But less-than-benevolent realities are often lost behind the warm fuzzies of altruism.

As Khari Wendell McClelland illustrates in his music/theatre hybrid Freedom Singer, the phenomenon known as the Underground Railroad in the 1800s would fall into that category. And the “fake lore” that posits Canada as a civil rights haven from the slavery of the United States — a Heritage Minute used in the show, for instance, depicts a terrified black woman and her dignified white benefactor waiting for her father to arrive hidden in a church pew — doesn’t tell the whole story.

Yet McClelland, a musician and singer in the Vancouver gospel group The Sojourners, understands the importance of mythology and metaphor in creating a sense of home and place.

That forms the impetus of Freedom Singer, a documentary-style piece of theatre that blends McClelland’s original music with 1850s freedom songs, verbatim interview excerpts and first-hand stories.

It’s directed by Andrew Kushnir of Project: Humanity, a Toronto theatre company that uses journalistic research and verbatim texts to explore social issues. (The Middle Place, for instance, looked at youth shelters and Small Axe, homophobia.)

As the inaugural production in the Streetcar Crowsnest’s Scotiabank Community Studio (in association with Crow’s Theatre and Vancouver’s Urban Ink Productions), Freedom Singer tells of McClelland’s journey to find the music that would have accompanied his great-great-great-grandmother Kizzy, an escaped slave who walked to Ontario, lost her legs to the cold, had two children with a British-Canadian, then returned to Detroit after emancipation.

McClelland’s research was reinforced by CBC journalist Jodie Martinson; onstage, he’s joined by musician Noah Walker and soul singer Tanika Charles, resurrecting these songs for contemporary audiences.

Freedom Singer suffers from the challenges you would expect when a research project is translated to the stage: the action is not very thrilling and the tension is mostly weak when the production isn’t dispelling the myths that have grown around the Underground Railroad. But McClelland is an earnest performer and the show finds a sweet spot when he explains his own journey to find his personal freedom in Vancouver, escaping a hostile living environment in Detroit.

Music, he says, was used like maps that slaves used to communicate and subtly mock their oppressors: “creative ways to thrive and survive.” There’s a lovely parallel to McClelland’s profession as a musician, and his desire to channel Kizzy through the music of her time is natural and heartwarming.

Throughout Black History Month, Freedom Singer will travel across Canada (including many of the places where McClelland and Martinson researched).

At a time when the idea of “home” is so contentious, this is a sweet reminder of our own history of welcoming newcomers and the many ways people can stay strong in the face of tyranny.

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