Notice to Appear

Irina Kruzhilina / Visual Echo

Presented by La MaMa, Jan 21 - 24, 2027 as part of the Under the Radar Festival

Tickets at: https://utrfest.org/program/notice-to-appear/

Notice to Appear is a live theatrical performance and staged public tribunal conceived, written, and directed by Irina Kruzhilina. It exposes the dysfunctional dynamics of the U.S. immigration court system and the often-opaque forces that determine asylum seekers’ fates. This theater work interrogates the roles of those working inside today’s immigration courts and asks what responsibility the public bears for a system operating largely out of sight. Notice to Appear draws on extensive research—including dozens of immigration court observations, public records and interviews with asylum seekers, immigration judges, former ICE attorneys, immigration lawyers and court interpreters. The project has been developed in close dialogue with people whose lives and professions are embedded in the system it examines, including several immigration judges dismissed by the current administration.

Notice to Appear is not a verbatim play. It exists between documentary and fiction, using composite characters, condensed testimony and reconstructed scenes to protect the identities of those whose experiences inform the work while preserving the factual integrity and dramatic force of their accounts. By transforming the immigration courtroom into a theatrical and civic space, Notice to Appear brings a normally hidden world into public view.

Visual Echo creates and presents original, visually arresting, politically charged live performances that ignite public dialogue around urgent social issues. Through deep, multi-year research and sustained partnerships with communities directly connected to each project, we investigate questions of immigration, displacement, polarization, and peacebuilding. Our work brings documentary material into conversation with speculative storytelling, immersive environments, and participatory performance. We use theatre to examine the systems shaping our lives, and to challenge their seeming inevitability by giving visible, tangible, embodied form to what we might create in their place.