By Neil Armstrong

As coincidence would have it, “Get That Hope,” a play set in Little Jamaica about a family getting ready to celebrate Jamaica’s independence will have its opening night at the Stratford Festival on August 10, the same day that the Jamaican Canadian Association in Toronto will host its signature 62^nd Jamaica independence and anniversary gala.

The cast and creative team are looking forward to its world première at the festival. Written by Andrea Scott, it is directed by André Sills and features Savion Roach as Simeon Whyte, son; Celia Aloma as Rachel Whyte, daughter; Conrad Coates as Richard Whyte, father; and Kim Roberts as Margaret Whyte, mother; with Jennifer Villaverde as Millicent Flores. Scott, Aloma, Coates, and Roberts are of Jamaican heritage.

Scott, an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, who recently returned to Canada after residing in West Hollywood, California, and working for Disney, is excited about her play being presented at the festival. The play is based on the life of her family, but she has fictionalized some aspects as well.

Richard Whyte is determined to celebrate Jamaican Independence Day in style. The rice is soaking, the ginger beer is cooling but his squabbling family has other ideas. Over the course of a single sweltering day in Toronto’s Little Jamaica, a lifetime of buried secrets and dreams will surface, forcing a re-examination of true independence, notes a description of the play.

In 2018, Scott saw American playwright Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” about one day in the life of a dysfunctional family who are difficult to be around but can’t be away from each other.

“I was watching the play and thought we don’t have anything like this in Canada. We don’t have a play about Black families who are not just jokes and making everybody laugh. We want to see everything that goes on in their life but see that they still love one another even if they drive each other crazy.”

This led the playwright to think of her own family. Although vowing to never write about herself or her family because they are boring, that soon changed when she tried to explain to people that she has two brothers—one of whom is her father’s son but not her mother’s who came from Jamaica to live with her family when she was four years old.

People would ask what it was like for her brother. Initially, she assumed that everything was fine, but upon further consideration realized that her mother had a problem with having to raise somebody else’s child and not having a choice in the matter.

Her brother told her that he never felt like he was a part of the family — something that she only found out as an adult.

In the play, she combined her brother feeling like an outsider and herself constantly having to be exceptional and being taken for granted.

Conrad Coates who plays Richard Whyte, the father, is channeling her own father, she said, and at times sounds just like him.

After a 27-year absence from Stratford, the prolific actor in theatre, film and television, and director, as the patriarch of the family, contends with issues discovered by the household and the audience at the same time.

Having performed in Shakespeare plays at Stratford, “Get That Hope” appealed to him because he would be acting in a Jamaican play and speaking patois. “I’ve never experienced that before in my career,” said Coates who finally had something that he could relate more to culturally.

Scott thinks every Caribbean person who attends the play will identify themselves with the characters.

Kim Roberts makes her Stratford debut as the family’s matriarch who, like most West Indian women, has a lot to say about many things.

Having lived in Little Jamaica for 25 years, “a neighbourhood with so much history, culture and vibes,” and where people live for many years, she said the script appealed to her.

With a lengthy career encompassing over 200 stage, film, television and voice credits, Roberts, the daughter of a Jamaican father, said she is embodying all her Jamaican relatives in her voice, accent, mannerism and way of thinking to represent Margaret Whyte.

When Scott’s mother moved to Canada, she lived in the Eglinton and Oakwood area, known as Little Jamaica,” with her aunt because her mother was a domestic worker living with a Canadian family. Her mother attended Oakwood Collegiate.

“Get That Hope” runs from July 21 to September 28 at the Studio Theatre. “This is a play about family in all its complexities,” said Sills. “Families are complex things full of history, full of secrets, full of trauma, and you’re stuck with them. The play asks: Can you really share the darkness in your life with your parents or family members?”

  Stratford