Anna In The Tropics

. . . there are many kinds of light.

The light of fires. The light of stars.

The light that reflects off rivers.

Light that penetrates through cracks.

Then theres the type of light that reflects off the skin.

—Nilo Cruz, Anna in the Tropics

This lush romantic drama depicts a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of Depression-era America. Set in Ybor City (Tampa) in 1930, Cruz imagines the catalytic effect the arrival of a new "lector" (who reads Tolstoys Anna Karenina to the workers as they toil in the cigar factory) has on a Cuban-American family. Cruz celebrates the search for identity in a new land.

Reviews:

"The words of Nilo Cruz waft from the stage like a scented breeze. They sparkle and prickle and swirl, enveloping those who listen in both specific place and time . . . and in timeless passions that touch us all. In Anna in the Tropics, Cruz claims his place as a storyteller of intricate craftsmanship and poetic power."—Miami Herald

“Deeply engrossing.” –Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle

“Earnestly poetic…Mr. Cruz has created a work as wistful and affectingly ambitious as its characters. Anna in the Tropics reaches for the artistic heavens -- specifically, that corner of eternity occupied by the plays of Anton Chekhov, where yearning is an existential condition.” –Ben Brantley, New York Times

Nilo Cruz is a young Cuban-American playwright whose work has been produced widely around the United States, including the Public Theater (New York, NY), South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa, CA), Magic Theatre (San Francisco, CA), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, McCarter Theater (Princeton, NJ) and New Theatre (Coral Gables, FL). His other plays include Night Train to Bolina, Two Sisters and a Piano, Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, and Anna in the Tropics (Winner of 2003 Pulitzer Prize). Mr. Cruz teaches playwriting at Yale University and lives in New York City.

“Earnestly poetic. In evoking the lost Cuban-American world of a Florida cigar factory in 1929, Mr. Cruz has created a work as wistful and affectingly ambitious as its characters. 'Anna in the Tropics' reaches for the artistic heavens -- specifically, that corner of eternity occupied by the plays of Anton Chekhov, where yearning is an existential condition.” – Ben Brantley, New York Times

“The first Pulitzer winner by a Latino playwright, Anna also does something common to many great works of art, new or old: It makes an unfamiliar place feel familiar. Anna in the Tropics makes a strong case for the transformative powers of literature. Willingly or not, all the characters absorb Anna Karenina, and their lives are changed by it. Cruz is also writing, however, about the importance of making time to savor the small things in life – ‘taking walks and sitting on park benches, smoking a cigar slowly and calmly, as the lector puts it.” – J. Wynn Rousuck, Baltimore Sun

“…In Anna in the Tropics, Cruz claims his place as a storyteller of intricate craftsmanship and poetic power … [Cruz] has turned out many wonderful plays — but none more shimmeringly beautiful ” – Miami Herald

“Deeply engrossing.” – Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle