Stage/Theatre

What: Come Home — The Legend of Daddy Hall
Where: Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Ave.
When: Wed., May 14 to Sun., June 9
Why you should go: Prolific stage and screen actor Daren A. Herbert stars in Tarragon world premiere as John “Daddy” Hall, a little-known historical figure who scouted for Tecumseh during the War of 1812, escaped slavery and lived for over 100 years, mostly in Ontario.

DAREN A. HERBERT has been swimming in history. The Dora-winning stage and screen actor’s last couple of theatrical projects have been historical fictions set in tumultuous political times. The most recent was Soulpepper Theatre’s March adaptation of Three Sisters, set in Nigeria during the Biafran War. And three months earlier, in Cahoots Theatre’s Sweeter, he played a Florida farmer living 20 years after the American Civil War.

This month at the Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, he’s taking on the titular role in the world premiere of Audrey Dwyer’s Come Home — The Legend of Daddy Hall, directed by company artistic director Mike Payette.

John Hall, nicknamed “Daddy” because he’s said to have fathered 21 children, saw three centuries, from the late 1700s to the early 1900s. It’s likely his age even pushed above 110.

Although the historical record regarding this legendary figure is foggy, he seems to have lived many lives in the span of one. Of Mohawk and African descent, Hall scouted for Tecumseh during the War of 1812 before being captured and enslaved by Virginian soldiers. He later escaped by way of the Ohio River, making his way to Canada, where he participated in the 1837 Farmers’ Revolt and became Owen Sound’s town crier.

The team behind Come Home — The Legend of Daddy Hall isn’t stressed that few historical details are available. The blurriness of the record may even be part of what makes this “legend” interesting. “We do have to fill in a lot of gaps. And there’s so many differing little pockets of information,” says Herbert in a mid-rehearsal Zoom interview with NEXT. “But because of all that, we get to extrapolate a little bit from here and a little bit from there and blend it into something. And I’ve been involved with the play’s development long enough that I’ve learned some beautiful things, which have helped paint me a picture of Hall.”

Multiple times during our conversation, Herbert emphasizes how difficult it is for him to comprehend the grand sweep of Hall’s life. “It’s not really fathomable for me — just the sheer length of time he’d been on the Earth and the things that he saw and was involved in, the things he did.”

But Herbert finds it helpful to connect Hall’s experiences with his own. Herbert is from Bermuda, where he served in the military. He tells me about the adrenaline-pumping experience of doing a live-fire exercise in a Kenyan forest.

“The only thing I could hear was my own heartbeat,” he says. “All the other sounds became so small. Even cracking branches.” When a noise came out of nowhere, it would “jam his entire system.”

Herbert says he thinks that kind of “sensory sensitivity” must have been ever-present during Hall’s journey north. “Any sound could be someone with a rifle coming to snatch him and take him back.”

More than anything, though, Herbert is grateful the show has given him the chance to learn about Hall, who he hadn’t known about before reading the play. “Why didn’t I hear about this? Why didn’t I know more about this person? This is an amazing story,” he says. “There’s part of me that says we need to be screaming about this person. This person should be honoured and reflected on. There’s statues and paintings … of lots of people. There’s no reason he shouldn’t be one of them.”