‘Green Card’ to Move East for N.Y. Festival

JoAnne Akalaitis’ controversial play “Green Card,” first seen at the Mark Taper Forum in 1986, will migrate to New York in June.

The theatrical collage will play 15 performances, June 13-25, at New York’s Joyce Theatre as part of the first New York International Festival of the Arts as well as the Joyce’s American Theater Exchange, an annual summer showcase for theatrical productions from throughout the country.

AT&T; will pay most of the costs of taking the play to New York. (The corporation will also underwrite two productions by Boston’s American Repertory Theatre as part of the same partnership between the Theater Exchange and the New York Festival.)

“Green Card” depicts the American immigrant experience from Ellis Island at the turn of the century to Los Angeles in the ‘80s. Most of the original cast will return, but the set, originally designed for the Taper’s thrust stage, must be adapted for the 474-seat proscenium Joyce Theatre.

Akalaitis, the writer and director, is conducting a workshop at the Taper to prepare the production for its journey east. She’s revising the text, primarily the second act, Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson said Tuesday.

“She has done more research on the Southeast Asian immigrants and why they’re coming here,” Davidson said, “and she also wants to incorporate the effect of the amnesty program.”

The other show Davidson considered reviving for New York was Joshua Sobol’s “Ghetto,” but “it proved to be too expensive,” he said, adding that “we couldn’t go at all if we had to do any fund-raising of our own.”

The Taper’s production of “In the Belly of the Beast” was part of the American Theater Exchange in 1985, and San Diego Repertory’s “Holy Ghosts” was seen at last year’s Exchange.

“Green Card” is the second Los Angeles entry in the festival, joining Stages’ three-play “Pavlovsky Marathon,” which will be presented at New York’s Harold Clurman Theatre.