Moving the Centre: Two Plays: Small Axe & Freedom Singer

**Moving the Centre explores the work of two theatre artists who dare, fumble, and persist in bringing audiences into a space where we can all listen differently. *The two plays it includes ― *Small Axe and Freedom Singer ― lean into the problems and possibilities of verbatim theatre to engage questions of justice and identity and the complex history all around us. Originally developed and produced by Toronto’s socially engaged theatre company Project: Humanity, these plays explore the power of recorded “real-life” encounters as a way for artists and the public to re-examine our defining narratives.

Small Axe charts the quest of a queer white playwright, Andrew Kushnir, who – because of an unsettling moment with a friend – feels a pull towards investigating homophobia in Jamaica. What starts as an artist researching an injustice to which he feels some kinship, evolves into a startling excavation of self and the stories we claim of others. To whom does an injustice “belong”? Through a constellation of exchanges – with activists, refugees, priests and ministers, journalists, fellow artists, Pride Festival revellers, and many Black queer people, Small Axe invites us to sit with our differences in order to discover how intricately connected we are.

Freedom Singer is a musical/verbatim theatre hybrid, constructed from hard-won archival material and family lore, documenting playwright Khari Wendell McClelland’s search for his ancestral grandmother Kizzy and the songs she may have sung during her escape through the Underground Railroad. For him, the “songs are like maps” leading back to the past, the enduring impacts of slavery and our capacity to lovingly reunite with denied histories.

With an opening essay by Kushnir and a concluding essay by McClelland, the book’s literal centre (between the plays) is a verbatim dialogue where the two discuss the white gaze vs. Black “looking back,” theatre-as-a-practice, and how centring caring and equitable relationships is what can make this kind of challenging theatre more ethical, more viable, and more truthful. Governor General Literary Award-winning poet Cecily Nicholson provides a powerful foreword.

Small Axe, cast of 6 actors, including 5 of Black descent. LGBTQ+ representation strongly encouraged Freedom Singer, cast of 3 actors, including 2 of Black descent

Andrew Kushnir is an award-winning playwright, director, dramaturge, and performer who lives in Toronto. He is the artistic director of the socially engaged theatre company Project: Humanity, a leading developer of verbatim theatre in Canada. His plays include The Middle Place, Small Axe, Wormwood, The Gay Heritage Project (with Paul Dunn and Damien Atkins), Freedom Singer (with Khari Wendell McClelland), and Towards Youth: a play on radical hope. His work has been especially supported by Tarragon Theatre, the Theatre Centre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Canadian Stage, Buddies in Bad Times, Crow’s Theatre, the Summerworks Festival, the Stratford Festival, and Dr. Kathleen Gallagher’s Drama Research. In 2021, Andrew released This Is Something Else, a theatre history investigative podcast series, which he created for the Arts Club in Vancouver. He is a graduate of the University of Alberta and a Loran Scholar.

Vancouver-based artist Khari Wendell McClelland, originally from Detroit, has over the past decade become a darling on the Canadian music scene for his distinct mix of soul and gospel. Since 2016, Freedom Singer – a multidisciplinary work of theatre, history, and music – has had a life on stage, in concert, on television, on radio, in an album, and now in publication. Its live iteration has had three Canadian national tours. A much sought-after facilitator and teacher, Khari leads workshops around the globe fostering community, the arts, and justice through values-based creative facilitation.