Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer

Debra Ehrhardt

WHEN Debra Ehrhardt launched her theatre career in the United States over 20 years ago, she discovered that being a foreigner was a tough sell to playwrights.

"They told me I would never get a job with my Jamaican accent, and I would have to go to a coach and learn to speak with an American accent," she told The Gleaner, recently. "And then they had, the nerve to say I didn't look Jamaican."

Ehrhardt has had the last laugh. Her one-woman play, Jamaica Farewell, has been a hit with audiences and critics in the US and Canada since opening in April 2006. It is scheduled to start its off-Broadway run February 22 at the Soho Playhouse in New York City.

Jamaica Farewell is Ehrhardt's look back at why she left her homeland in the 1970s. Many middle-class Jamaicans, disenchanted with Prime Minister Michael Manley's socialist policies, took flight in droves for North America.

Significant impact on life

Ehrhardt, who lives in Los Angeles, California, with her two children, said that period had a significant impact on her life.

"The '70s in Jamaica were a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I lived it, some of my family went to jail," she said. "So, this is just my little story."

Ehrhardt, who is in her mid-40s, said many persons who have seen Jamaica Farewell are Jamaicans who came of age during the 1970s. She notes that several of them take their children to the play.

"It's kind of a history lesson for them," she said.

To date, Jamaica Farewell has played in major Californian cities, as well as Florida, New York, Atlanta and Toronto. Dates are also scheduled for Texas and Boston.

The first of three daughters, Debra Phillips (Ehrhardt's maiden name) said she grew up in the Shortwood area of St Andrew and attended The Queen's School she was a youngster in the 1970s, she remembers how divisive some of Manley's controversial programmes were.

"He (Manley) is one of my heroes but we cannot deny the fact that with all his noble aspirations, that time in Jamaica was turbulent," said Ehrhardt. "We cannot deny the roadblocks and violence."

Jamaica Farewell, which is directed by Jamaican Monique Lai, has got the thumbs-up from respected media, including the Associated Press. Ehrhardt says she visits Jamaica regularly, but reactions to her bringing the show here have been negative.

"People call me up and say, 'don't bring the play here, dem will kill yuh off'," she said with a throaty laugh. "That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, only seven minutes of the play is political. It's a family story."

Flight notes

Singer Pluto Shervington's patriotic I Man Born Ya, recorded in the mid-1970s, addressed middle-class flight from Jamaica.

Morris Cargill, a Gleaner columnist and fierce critic of Prime Minister Michael Manley, was one of many who left Jamaica during the 1970s.

Trinidadian calypsonian, Lord Laro, criticised the 'innacurate' portrayal of Jamaica abroad in his 1975 hit song Foreign Press.

While many Jamaicans fled Jamaica, celebrities, including Johnny Cash and Calvin Lockhart, bought homes and lived here in the 1970s.