Valley Life : jaunts : Bringing History to Life : The African American experience is chronicled in Theatricum Botanicum performance.

As a member of the repertory company at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon, Earnestine Phillips has played the roles of both men and women, whites and blacks, Americans and Europeans.

Come Sunday, she takes on the role of Harriet Tubman, heroine of the Underground Railroad who rescued 300 slaves from the South in the Civil War era on an escape route over forest trails connecting a series of safe houses.

The concert performance includes events from 300 years of “Black History in America.” The six-person cast will perform slave songs, Billie Holiday’s classic “Strange Fruit,” R&B;, jazz, even banjo tunes.

“The music and the outdoor setting really work with the material,” Phillips said in a recent interview. “There is a lot of music.”

The show includes classic Negro spirituals that originated not in churches but in clandestine outdoor gatherings where slaves addressed their appeals for freedom directly to heaven.

An 11-year veteran of performing Shaw, Shakespeare and Brecht, Phillips said she is comfortable playing all types of roles.

“We have (artistic director) Ellen Geer to thank for pioneering work with this nontraditional casting,” she said.

In Sunday’s performance, Phillips also will play Rosa Parks, whose act of defiance on an Alabama bus launched the civil rights movement.

When the show has toured local schools, Phillips has even re-created the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Others in the cast of three African Americans and three whites will portray Quaker abolitionists, slave owners and Ku Klux Klan members, as well as Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Maya Angelou and Nelson Mandela.

Joining Phillips in the cast will be fellow Theatricum Botanicum regulars Gerald Rivers, Lenore Thomas, Tom Allard, Melora Marshall and Geer.

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“When we have done the (touring) show in the schools, the kids have been asking for Malcolm X, so we’ve added him recently,” Phillips said.

“It’s exciting for the kids to see history come to life when they see it performed. If you say ‘I’m this person,’ and stand there in front of them, they remember it (and) are flabbergasted that these things (we portray) ever happened.”

The text, compiled by Geer, is based on the actual words of the people portrayed.

“I love these history pieces; they are my favorite things,” Geer said.

“We are getting more and more requests to do them in schools. This Sunday will be the first time we will do it for a (public) theatrical audience.”

The new version is longer, but, Geer said, “It moves very swiftly.”

As with the school version, audience members will have an opportunity to question the actors after the performance.

BE THERE

“Black History in America,” Theatricum Botanicum Performance Series, Sunday, 1 p.m., 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd. $10, kids 5 and under free. Call (310) 455-3723.