Would you marry for a green card?

Would you marry for a green card? This is the intriguing question at the heart of Jamaica-born playwright David Heron’s romantic comedy-drama Love and Marriage and New York City, which returns to the New York stage this June in celebration of its 25th anniversary.

Broadway World Award winner Heron will produce and direct the one-night-only silver anniversary performance, to be presented as a staged reading production at the Jamaica Performing Arts Center on Sunday, June 22 at 7 p.m. It will be an exclusive cultural event in celebration of New York City’s annual Caribbean American Heritage Month festivities, held across the city each June.

Explaining his decision to revive the popular production, Heron said, “Over 25 years after its world première in Jamaica, Love and Marriage and New York City remains as topical as ever, dealing as it does with the immensely critical and complicated subject of immigration. In a realistic and humane way, it highlights the allure of the American dream to immigrants everywhere, and the extent to which people will go to achieve it ... with both dramatic and comedic consequences.”

He added that especially with everything happening now regarding immigration, “the play has never been more relevant”.

Set in Manhattan in the late 1990s, Love and Marriage and New York City tells the story of two Jamaica-born couples who marry strictly for green card purposes, only to discover that once Cupid’s arrow flies, no marriage is ever purely about business.

Heron believes that the experience of the play in 2025 will evoke feelings of great nostalgia as well as concern about the United States’ current and evolving immigration policies.

He noted that the play’s American première took place just over a year before September 11, and detailed that America was “so much more innocent then” — the Twin Towers still stood; travelling was relatively stress-free, and there was no US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Department of Homeland Security.

“So much was so different back then. But the one thing that has not changed is that the easiest and simplest way to acquire US residency and citizenship is to marry an American citizen. I’ve recently spoken with immigration attorneys as well as individuals seeking to stay [in the US] permanently, and this absolutely remains the consensus. And while as of now the US government can do many things, the one thing it cannot do is tell you who to fall in love with and who to marry. So until someone comes up with a magic formula to determine which marriages are totally ‘genuine’ and which ones are for green card purposes – because, in many instances, some unions are a combination of both – they will not be able to stop them.”

Love and Marriage and New York City is Heron’s biggest international success to date and had its gala world première at the Little Little Theatre in Kingston in 1999. Directed by the late Norman Rae, it featured actors Karen Harriott, Douglas Prout, Bertina Macaulay and Heron himself, as the four, star-crossed “green card” lovers.

Among the many special guests and celebrities who attended the show during its first run were Emmy-Award winner Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Shottas and Dancehall Queen star Paul Campbell. The production went on to have its American première with a South Florida regional tour in 2000 before heading to Europe where it toured throughout the United Kingdom in both 2002 and 2003, eventually playing at the world famous Peggy Ashcroft Theatre in London.

It was produced at The Paul Robeson Theatre in New York before arriving Off-Broadway at Brooklyn’s Billie Holiday Theatre in 2005, directed by theatre icon Woody King Jr. King’s production would go on to become an official selection of the 2006 National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the largest black theatre festival in the world. Kingston 6 Productions of Toronto then produced the Canadian première at The Harborfront Centre, downtown Toronto, in 2008.

Among other accolades, Love and Marriage and New York City earned eight International Theatre Institute (Jamaica) Actor Boy Award nominations — the equivalent of Broadway’s Tony Award — as well as three AUDELCO Award nominations for Excellence in Off-Broadway Black Theatre in New York. It also earned Heron the City Council of New York’s Proclamation and Award for Excellence in 2006.

entertainment@gleanerjm.com