A playwright hopes a musical will help Grenadians to come to terms with the devastation caused by Hurricane Ivan. Aye Yay Yay Ivan, a play by Ricardo Keens-Douglas will soon be staged in the Grenadian capital, St George's. The play is about a group friends who get together to swap stories about their experiences during Hurricane Ivan and give thanks for surviving the storm ordeal. Keens-Douglas, the brother of popular Trinidadian storyteller Paul Keens-Douglas told BBC Caribbean Radio the play is meant to show Grenadians that there is hope after the disaster. "You saw the good things, you saw the bad things, the surprises you got from Ivan like the looting," he said. "It's just not a laughing play, it's the kind of play that will ask questions about why certain things happen and it's also a play about hope because I believe that we all went through a rough time and for us to survive, we have to see the future, we have to believe in ourselves, we have to have the faith and we have to have hope." "When people come to the show, what I would like them to take away is 'yes, we can make it, we will make it'." Aye Yay Yay Ivan is not the first play based on Hurricane Ivan, as a comedy has previously been staged but Keens-Douglas believes that while comedy can be used to convey the same message; he was more comfortable using the musical genre. "I just wanted to put songs into the production, I just didn't want people to come and laugh because Ivan was a serious thing." Theme of hope He said some of the play's touching moments mirrored real Grenadian experiences during the hurricane. "There is a moment where mother and son are outside and they're trying desperately to reach each other and there's music going, it's very dramatic and they don't connect, and the son disappears and that happened during Ivan - I wanted to go down that route so people can say, 'that experience - I went through that'. "On the positive side, the morning after Ivan, the cast gets up and they look outside and see the devastation and everybody is just totally devastated," he said. "In the middle of all that devastation, there's a couple and she comes up to the husband and says, 'baby, we've lost everything, we have nothing, we don't have insurance what are we going to do,'" he said. "He looks at her in the middle of the rubble and devastation and says, 'we have each other, that's the most important thing'." Keens-Douglas said the central theme of the play is hope, and for many of the actors, the entire experience has therapeutic. "The play gave work to actors because some of the actors working here don't have a roof, they're living under tarpaulins," he said. "So for them it is great to get away from their homes to come and rehearse and tell me about their experiences and live it. All of this is really good therapy for me, the actors and the audience." Grenada-born Keens-Douglas has lived in Canada where he is a well-known stage and radio personality. For two years (1991-1992) he created and hosted Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio's storytelling show "Cloud 9." Reprinted from bbccaribbean.com