Jamaican-born playwright celebrates 25th anniversary of his life-changing play

David Heron’s play “Love and Marriage and New York City” is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year during Caribbean American Heritage Month, which is celebrated annually in June. The play will be presented for one night on June 22 at the Jamaica Performing Arts Center, located at 153-10 Jamaica Ave., Jamaica, New York, 11432.

According to Heron, creating the world premiere production in Jamaica in 1999 was very special and magical because it involved a whole team of Jamaican actors and a Jamaican director. It was also the first production fully produced by his company, Sure Thing Productions, which consisted of him and his two sisters, to whom he gives credit for so much of its success.

The play had its American premiere during its tour to South Florida in 2000. According to Heron, the reaction to it was phenomenal because mainstream Florida press like the Sun Sentinel and others, who never generally covered Jamaican theatre, did entire feature stories on the show.  “They really thought that this was a play by a Jamaican writer that could attract many non-Jamaicans as well, and I’m happy that they were proven right,” he continued.

Heron grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, in a middle-class neighborhood called Acadia. In those days, kids would run races on the street barefoot and ride bikes and skateboards without helmets or shoes because they didn’t know what elbow and knee pads were—nothing like the kids today.

On what it was like growing up there, he said, “We were outside all the time, and the neighbors looked out for us all like we were their own kids. If they saw you misbehaving and didn’t discipline us directly, you can be sure they’d report you to your parents – which was not cool. I’m glad I grew up in that time. It was fun, innocent, amazing.”

He is the youngest of seven children and was a late gift to his parents. “So, in some ways, I grew up almost like an only child because my siblings were gone from the house when I was very young. That sparked the need for me to entertain myself, which led to my writing and acting out my own stories at an early age, by myself or with my longest childhood friend, Angela,” Heron added.

Both of his parents were educators, and so early on, he also developed a love for reading. “Looking back, these factors all started me on the path that led to where I am today,” he added.

Something many others may not know about Heron is that he’s a massive fan of the 80s sitcom The Golden Girls, his favorite comedy series of all time! He binge-watches it constantly, and as a writer, he thinks the show has some of the best television writing ever.

He sees his parents, Stanley and Ethel Heron, as the most significant influence on his path in life today, who had a love for books, literature, and classic movies. “I’d watch old Hollywood films with them at home all the time, and although I couldn’t articulate it back then, I knew that I wanted to be involved in that industry- the business of storytelling- in some way,” he stated.

His initial acting experience began when he starred in high school and college plays, some of which he wrote. He attended the University Of The West Indies, where he majored in Communications. It was after graduation, when he settled into a very comfortable corporate life for a couple of years, that he began to miss acting and theatre.

He was interested in becoming an actor, but in Jamaica at the time, it was a very closed theatre community and difficult for an outsider to break in. So he chose to write his first play, a romantic comedy called Ecstasy, intending to launch his acting career by playing the lead role himself, that of a young corporate executive from a wealthy background who falls for a stripper from a local nightclub.

When the play was produced, the director — a Jamaican legend and my great friend, the late Trevor Nairne — didn’t see me as right for that role, so I didn’t end up playing it until the play was revived years later,” Heron explained.

For him, writing the play was an adventure because I couldn’t type at all, so he paid one of the extraordinary ladies in the typing pool at his job, whose name was Florence, to type it for him on Sundays at the office, and he’d sit with her and dictate it because she couldn’t read what he’d written. It was a huge hit and enjoyed a two-year run in tiny Jamaica.

Discussing the life experiences that led him to write his fourth well-known play, Love and Marriage, and New York City, Heron said that though many people believed he wrote it after moving to New York, the truth is the opposite.

“I wrote and produced the play while living in Jamaica, and its international success has enabled me to move here. But at the time I wrote it, I had visited New York many times and had friends and family living here, some of whom had gone through green card marriages. So I wrote it from anecdotes, research, and my own personal experiences of visiting and soaking up the city’s vibe.”

He was also heavily influenced by romantic comedy films set in New York City, including Mike Nichols’ Working Girl, Tom Cruise’s Jerry McGuire, the 1997 Oscar-winning romantic comedy As Good As It Gets, starring Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt, and a beautiful film set in London called Notting Hill, with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant.

His biggest inspiration for this play was Giacomo Puccini’s incredible Italian opera Madame Butterfly, which is essentially a story about a green card marriage between an American naval officer and a Japanese geisha that ends in tragedy. “That opera and its music are literally interwoven into the play,  as the characters, one by one, are drawn to the story and possibly see aspects of themselves in it,” he continued.

Heron says that from the first time his parents brought me to New York as a child, he knew I would live here one day, though he didn’t know how it would happen.

“The city was in my soul from that first visit. Everything about it – the excitement, the possibilities, the art, history, culture: I knew I belonged here, and this play I wrote about the city made it happen.  Once I started living here, a few years after I had written it, I was stunned to realize just how accurate my depiction of the city was,” he added.

Since then, the play has been performed all over this country, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with unexpectedly positive reactions.

Heron shared that for many international audiences, it was the first time they saw a Jamaican play, and they were pleasantly surprised because the desire to pursue the American dream and marrying an American citizen to do so is a reality that resonates with people from everywhere – not just Jamaica and the Caribbean. He added that some Jamaicans living abroad reacted to it, saying that they had never seen anything quite like it before from a Jamaican writer, and they were very proud that a playwright was taking a risk to write something so different from what they were accustomed to seeing when Jamaican plays toured overseas.

According to Heron, it debuted Off-Broadway at The Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn in 2006. The theatre is a monumental cultural institution in the heart of Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. At that time, the theatre didn’t do Caribbean plays very often, even though the area has a very large Caribbean community.

“So when we played there, the enthusiasm and Jamaican and Caribbean pride was on full display. When we were selected for the National Black Theatre Festival the following year, we remounted the show to get ready for the festival, and we sold out again. It was a great experience,” Heron recalled.

When he found out that the play became an Official Selection of the 2007 National Black Theatre Festival in Winston Salem, North Carolina, the largest black theater festival in the world, he felt a bit of imposter syndrome at first, but having support from the cast, producer Marjorie Moon, and our legendary director, the great Woodie King Jr., helped him enjoy the experience as both a playwright and actor.

It means a great deal to Heron, and it honestly fills him with a tremendous sense of pride to know that Love and Marriage and New York City remain perhaps even more relevant now than they were 25 years ago, given that immigration is a huge issue right now in this country. But the fact that the work still holds up — that perhaps it was of its time or ahead of its time in such a way that it still matters — is everything for me.

His previous play, “Against His Will,” is becoming a mainstream US production in the not-too-distant future, with Malik Yoba (actor in the film Cool Runnings and the TV show New York Undercover)  onboard as the producer. It is a courtroom drama about a young Jamaican man who claims his female boss had sex with him without his consent, and he takes her to court. That play is now 27 years old, but Heron says it’s still relevant today in things such as The Me Too Movement, The Time’s Up Movement, and The Diddy trial.

Heron says he’d like to be remembered as a storyteller who entertained and educated. He says, “If you see any of my work, whether it be as a playwright, actor, producer, or director, and it makes you pause, think, reflect, reassess, I think that is the greatest compliment ever.”

For younger generations, Heron hopes that he can inspire a bit by example and experience by saying this: “Don’t think boundaries; think possibilities. There are enough people in this world who’ll try to put limitations on you. Don’t be one of them. Your dreams are your own. Give them everything.”

Tickets for the event are available at loveandmarriagetheplay.eventbrite.com.  High school and college students can attend the performance for free by calling 646-533-7021.