About

THE BIRTH OF TELL HELL

Tell Hell I Ain’t Comin’ has presented eighty-nine Live Show Performances in over seventeen cities across the USA. The very successful DVD version of the Live Show continues to captivate its audiences. The production boasts big dance numbers, Tear jerking scenes, funny moments, a powerful story, and an unforgettable experience for its audience.

THE STORY BEHIND “THE POEM” & “THE PLAY”

The airplane climbed the airways, the thought of the plane nose-diving occupied my mind. I calculated a theory in my tired mind that if I am going to die, I want to be awake for that final moment of my life. I fought the sleepiness that had now engulfed my being

Yet, something else made me more uncomfortable than the thought of the plane crashing. Dying was one thing, but where I would end up after I died was clearly another, more frightening thought. I closed my eyes and asked God to forgive me for all the sins I could recall that I had committed – especially those I might have committed that day – and hoped with all my heart that God had heard my very sincere prayer.

Sleep eventually got the better of me, but for how long, I do not know. I recall rubbing sleep from my eyes as I searched for my carry-on notebook. With my notebook in hand, I put pen to paper and forty-five minutes later I had penned a ten-page prose entitled, “What in Hell do you want?” Little did I know the impact that this poem was destined to make in so many lives.

Some weeks after writing the poem, I publicly read it at a church. The response was indeed overwhelming. For the next ten years, I read the poem at churches and other functions in England, Jamaica, and the USA. I read to audiences as small as fifty and as large as five thousand.

In the mid-eighties, I moved from London to California, USA. Not long afterward, I read the poem at an International Youth Rally in San Diego, California. About two years later, while I was attending a function in Los Angeles, California, a man in his mid-thirties approached me. On approaching me, he hugged me.

 

“You don’t know me,” he said. “But I know you.” He then went on to tell me this most touching and inspiring story. This is what he said: You see, about two years ago I prepared myself to commit suicide. I wrote and mailed letters to family and friends. That night as I climbed into bed, I saw a crumpled sheet of paper lying under the covers. I smoothed it out and read it. It was a flyer announcing the upcoming Youth Rally in San Diego. I threw the flyer on the floor and climb into bed. As I reached for the gun, the image of the flyer came back. Then I had a thought, if I was going to take my life, I should at least make one more trip to the place my mother always made sure I went to as a child”. “Thirty minutes later, I was sitting in the back of that Youth Rally. I listened to the many choirs. I listened to the many testimonies, and I listened to the preaching. Nothing I heard touched me enough to change my mind from going home and taking my life; at least not until you got up and read that Poem “What in Hell do you want?”. “That was all I needed, that poem was what I was searching for. “What in Hell do you want?”, he continued, “That night I went home and retracted all my letters.” He then took my hands in his and squeezed them. “Today,” he said, “Today, I am clean. “I got off drugs, I started going to church”. “I recently got married; I am also now a minister”. “Thank you”.

He hugged me again and we stood there for a while. Soon, I felt tears streaming down my face. I never saw that man again, but for him alone, if for no one else, I thank God for giving me the words to write the poem. In the late-‘80’s I somewhat retired the reading of the poem. However, one Saturday morning in March 1993, I shared the poem with a neighbor; during our conversation she said to me, “Why don’t you turn the poem into a play?” Later that same day, I tape-recorded the first version of what would become the hit musical, TELL HELL I AIN’T COMIN’.