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Nilo Cruz shines as `Anna` unveils
New York, Sept 22: Not many theatregoers saw Anna in the Tropics during its brief run last winter at the tiny, enterprising New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, but enough people read it, including jurors for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for drama.
New York, Sept 22: Not many theatregoers saw Anna in the Tropics during its brief run last winter at the tiny, enterprising New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, but enough people read it, including jurors for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for drama.
Now, the curtain is going up on three different productions of the Pulitzer-blessed play -- in Princeton, New Jersey, Chicago and Costa Mesa, California. Broadway will see Anna in November when the version from New Jersey's McCarter Theatre, directed by Emily Mann, opens November 16 at the Royale Theatre.
Their unveilings will focus even more attention on the play's soft-spoken, yet intense author, Nilo Cruz. For the 42-year-old, Cuban-born Cruz, it has been a heady six months since he won the Pulitzer. Countless interviews. Renewed interest in his earlier works. The required visits to Hollywood for talks with show biz executives.
Anna in the Tropics is set specifically in 1929 in a small town near Tampa, Florida. The place is a cigar factory that employs Cuban immigrants. While they roll cigars, these workers are read to by a lector. And what he reads is the great Russian romance, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
"I wanted to write about the cigar industry in Tampa and specifically about the role of the 'lectores' (readers) in the cigar factories," Cruz says. "It's a beautiful tradition," a long-dead tradition the playwright first heard about from his father. "I always thought it was fascinating that these workers, some of the illiterate, would pay out of their own pockets to have someone read to them from newspapers and world literature." The play was commissioned by the New Theatre in Florida, using grant money from the National Endowment for Arts and the Theatre Communications Group. It had closed by the time the Pulitzers were announced and was chosen on the strength of its script.
Now, the curtain is going up on three different productions of the Pulitzer-blessed play -- in Princeton, New Jersey, Chicago and Costa Mesa, California. Broadway will see Anna in November when the version from New Jersey's McCarter Theatre, directed by Emily Mann, opens November 16 at the Royale Theatre.
Their unveilings will focus even more attention on the play's soft-spoken, yet intense author, Nilo Cruz. For the 42-year-old, Cuban-born Cruz, it has been a heady six months since he won the Pulitzer. Countless interviews. Renewed interest in his earlier works. The required visits to Hollywood for talks with show biz executives.
Anna in the Tropics is set specifically in 1929 in a small town near Tampa, Florida. The place is a cigar factory that employs Cuban immigrants. While they roll cigars, these workers are read to by a lector. And what he reads is the great Russian romance, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
"I wanted to write about the cigar industry in Tampa and specifically about the role of the 'lectores' (readers) in the cigar factories," Cruz says. "It's a beautiful tradition," a long-dead tradition the playwright first heard about from his father. "I always thought it was fascinating that these workers, some of the illiterate, would pay out of their own pockets to have someone read to them from newspapers and world literature." The play was commissioned by the New Theatre in Florida, using grant money from the National Endowment for Arts and the Theatre Communications Group. It had closed by the time the Pulitzers were announced and was chosen on the strength of its script.
Cruz finds theatre ceremonial but also very childlike in that actors play pretend.
"It's also a very generous art form, meaning that it's not just about what I write but it's what other people - the director and the cast - bring to the play, too.
"There is something very beautiful in the English language. You have the word 'play.' We don't have that word in Spanish. We have 'obra' which has more to do with work. 'Una obra de teatro' -- a work of theatre. But in English, you say 'play' and you say 'players,' which is quite lovely. I think that's something that's very appealing to me. I think that's what I like about theatre."
Bureau Report