Notice to Appear (NTA) is a live theatrical performance and staged public tribunal created, written, and directed by Irina Kruzhilina.

NTA exposes the dysfunctional dynamics of the U.S. immigration courts and the opaque forces determining asylum seekers’ fate. It interrogates the roles of all court actors—and the public’s responsibility—in the asylum crisis. 

NTA draws on extensive factual research, including dozens of immigration court observations and interviews with asylum seekers, refugees, immigration judges, former ICE attorneys, immigration lawyers, and court interpreters. NTA is not a verbatim play. It exists between documentary and fiction, using composite characters, condensed testimony, and imagined scenes to protect the identities of those whose experiences inform the work while preserving the accuracy and dramatic force of their accounts.

NTA unfolds in two parts.

The first is a highly theatrical, live-cinema-mediated staging of contemporary immigration court hearings, interweaving the stories of seven asylum seekers and culminating in judges’ decisions to grant or deny relief.

The second part shifts into the near future with a staged public tribunal that exposes the forces and actors driving the asylum crisis. Based on interviews with key stakeholders, actors portray “witnesses” (Immigration Judge, ICE attorney, lawyer, court interpreter, politician, and asylum seeker) who testify before an audience-committee about their role in the system’s collapse.

NTA is produced by Visual Echo in association with Dream Stack Productions. 

The project is supported by DCLA, NYSCA, LMCC, Peacedale Global Arts, and the Venturous Theatre Fund, and has been developed through residencies at Mercury Store, Baryshnikov Arts Center, MacDowell, North American Cultural Laboratory’s Deep Space Residency and En Garde Arts’ Uncommon Voices program.