David Heron revives ‘green card’ play Love and Marriage and NYC

Would you marry for a inexperienced card? That is the intriguing query on the coronary heart of Jamaican-born playwright David Heron’s romantic comedy drama Love and Marriage and New York Metropolis, which returns to the New York stage this June in celebration of its twenty fifth anniversary.

Broadway World Award-winner Heron will produce and direct the one-night-only silver anniversary efficiency to be introduced as a staged studying manufacturing at Jamaica Performing Arts Middle on Sunday, June 22, at 7:00 pm.

It is going to be an unique cultural occasion in celebration of New York Metropolis’s annual Caribbean American Heritage Month festivities, held throughout the town every June.

A complimentary Caribbean delicacies reception will precede the efficiency.

Explaining his resolution to revive the manufacturing, Heron mentioned: “Over 25 years after its world première in Jamaica, Love and Marriage and New York Metropolis stays as topical as ever, dealing because it does with the immensely important and complex topic of immigration. In a practical and humane method, it highlights the attract of the American dream to immigrants in every single place, and the extent to which individuals will go to realize it — with romantic, dramatic and comedic penalties… [S]electing Love and Marriage and New York Metropolis… was a pure transfer to make, particularly with all the pieces taking place in our present setting concerning immigration. The play has by no means been extra related, it appears, than now.”

Set in Manhattan within the late Nineteen Nineties, Love and Marriage and New York Metropolis tells the story of two Jamaican-born {couples} who marry strictly for inexperienced card functions, solely to find that after Cupid’s arrow flies, no marriage is ever purely about enterprise.

Heron believes that the expertise of the play in 2025 will evoke emotions of nice nostalgia in addition to concern in regards to the nation’s present and evolving immigration insurance policies.

The playwright shared that: “The American première came about simply over a 12 months earlier than 9/11. America was a lot extra harmless then. The Twin Towers nonetheless stood… There was no ICE or Division Of Homeland Safety. There was the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service). A lot was so totally different from now.”

Love and Marriage and New York Metropolis is Heron’s greatest worldwide success so far. Directed in 1999 by the now-late Norman Rae, it featured actors Karen Harriott, Douglas Prout, Bertina Macaulay, and Heron himself because the 4 star-crossed inexperienced card lovers. The manufacturing marked its American première with a South Florida regional tour in 2000 earlier than heading to Europe, the place it toured all through the UK in each 2002 and 2003, finally enjoying on the world-famous Peggy Ashcroft Theatre in London.

It was produced on the Paul Robeson Theatre in New York earlier than arriving Off Broadway at Brooklyn’s Billie Vacation Theatre in 2005, directed by legendary theatre icon Woody King Jr. Kingston 6 Productions of Toronto then produced the Canadian première at The Harbourfront Centre, downtown Toronto, in 2008.

Amongst different accolades, Love and Marriage and New York Metropolis earned eight Worldwide Theatre Institute (Jamaica) Actor Boy Award nominations, in addition to three AUDELCO Award nominations for Excellence in Off Broadway Black Theatre in New York. It additionally earned Heron the Metropolis Council of New York’s Proclamation and Award for Excellence in 2006.

In line with Heron, as with final 12 months’s première of McBee, an completed solid of actors spanning the worlds of stage, movie, and tv is being assembled for the present.

Tickets for the silver anniversary efficiency go on sale on Sunday, April 20.