Jamaican playwright David Heron’s play “Love and Marriage and New York City” is celebrating its 25th anniversary during June’s Caribbean American Heritage Month.

The play will be presented for one night on June 22 at the Jamaica Performing Arts Centre 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 with Heron explaining that the reaction 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.  

According to him, “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.”

Wrote and produced the play

Heron wrote and produced the play while living in Jamaica, and its international success has enabled him to move to New York. “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,” Heron told New York-based media outlet, Caribbean Life.

Heron was 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.

Heron grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, in a middle-class neighbourhood 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.

He is the youngest of seven children and was a late gift to his parents, who were both educators. Heron sees both 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.

Heron’s 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.

Heron was interested in becoming an actor but in Jamaica he said at the time was a very closed theatre community and difficult for an outsider like him 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, Jamaican theatre legend, the late Trevor Nairne didn’t see Heron as right for that role, “so I didn’t end up playing it until the play was revived years later,” Heron explained.