Nilo Cruz
Playwright Biography
Nilo Cruz was born in Matanzas, Cuba in 1960. When Cruz was just a baby, his father was imprisoned for two years for attempting to leave the island. Thus, Nilo was largely raised by his mother, aunt, and two older sisters. Nilo and his parents emigrated to Miami in 1970, leaving his sisters behind. He has only returned to Cuba once, when he was 20, to visit his sisters.
Upon arriving in America, he quickly learned English and began writing poetry in his teens. He attended community college in Miami where he developed an interest in directing. Actress and educator, Teresa María Rojas, mentored him and told him that she thought he was a writer, not a director. While attending community college, he directed a scene from Mud, which Maria Irene Fornés saw and loved. She immediately offered him a spot at the artist incubation project she ran, INTAR. Cruz moved to NYC and was mentored by her, eventually joining New Dramatists. Later, Paula Vogel offered him a scholarship to study playwriting with her at Brown. He graduated with an MFA in Playwriting from Brown in 1994.
Nilo's first play, Night Train to Boliña, premiered in 1994, when he was 34. However, it was not until 2003 that he really received critical acclaim when he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Anna in the Tropics. He won purely based on the strength of his script, as none of the judges had seen the production when it premiered in Florida. He was the first Latino playwright to ever be awarded the prize.
He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including two NEA/TCG National Theatre Artist Residency Grants, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, San Francisco's W. Alton Jones Award and a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award.
Highlighted Play: Two Sisters and a Piano
Synopsis
Two Sisters and a Piano was inspired, in part, by a true story Cruz heard, about a group of dissident artists who sent a letter to Castro in 1991. One group member, a female writer named María Elena Cruz Varela, was subsequently forced to eat her words--literally, in the street--as punishment for her outspokenness. She was later jailed as well.
The play tells the story of two sisters--María Celia, a writer, and Sofía, a pianist--living in Cuba under house arrest in the early 1990s. Despite their unfortunate living conditions and restlessness, the sisters strive to maintain the beauty and normalcy of their day-to-day lives to the extent possible. Their days are interrupted by the persistent Lieutenant Portuondo, who has been confiscating the letters María Celia and her exiled husband have been writing to each other. Portuondo becomes enchanted by María Celia's writing and makes a deal with her that he will read her the letters from her husband in exchange for her storytelling. The play is reminiscent of the tale of Scheherazade and the Thousand and One Nights, in that, through shared storytelling, the unlikely pair gradually become lovers. Meanwhile, Sofía has an awakening of her own after a visit from a piano tuner who tells her about the world outside. On a whim, she runs out into the night, dressed as a boy, to experience all the she has been missing out on.
How This Play Could Be Used
The play does a wonderful job of capturing the day-to-day realities of a period of Cuban history that Americans know little about. It would be a great companion to a unit on the Cuban revolution as it would remind students that Cuban history is not solely made up of political events and coups, but that there were real people just trying to live their lives as normally as possible in the midst of uprising and exile.
Nilo Cruz' entire body of work owes much inspiration to the work of Federico García Lorca, both thematically and poetically. In fact, Nilo Cruz is so inspired by the work and life story of Lorca, that he wrote a play called Lorca in a Green Dress, that tells the story of Lorca's death through a series of characters that embody different facets of Lorca himself. In a unit on magical realism in the theatre, the two playwrights would work wonderfully side-by-side.
It is important to note that the play (as with many of Nilo Cruz' works) does contain depictions of sex and sensuality. Sex is described lyrically and is by no means extraneous, but it would behoove the instructor to carefully gauge the maturity of their students when selecting this text as an addition to their curriculum.
Activity
A simple introduction for a high-school class to the theme of isolation that is presented in Two Sisters and a Piano, would be a riff on the classic "desert island" question. However, in this case students would be asked to brainstorm the one thing (aside from food, water, and shelter) they would need to stay sane if they were under house arrest like the sisters in the story. Students could also answer what elements of society they would miss the most under the same circumstances.
Discussion Questions
- What can students learn about history and their own culture through dramatic literature that cannot be learned from history books? Why is it so important for students to understand their own cultural heritage?
- What is a playwright's responsibility to their subject matter? What is an educator's responsibility in teaching that subject matter?
- Nilo Cruz characterizes himself as an exile and believes that the writer must, in some way, always be an exile so that he is able to see his subject from a distance. How does distance--both physical and emotional--manifest in Two Sisters and a Piano? How necessary is distance in affective art-making?
- In this video, Nilo Cruz discusses the balance of masculinity and femininity within his characters, and the process through which he is able to discover that balance while writing. What evidence of this process do we see in Two Sisters and a Piano? How does this inform and complicate cultural discussions of machismo?
Other Plays
Anna in the Tropics
Synopsis
Anna in the Tropics is by far Nilo Cruz' best-known work. The play is set in a cigar factory in a heavily-populated Cuban area of Tampa, Florida in the 1930s. It focuses on the tradition of the "lector," a worker whose responsibility it was to read books aloud to the factory workers. In Anna and the Tropics, a Cuban-American family eagerly awaits the arrival of their new lector, Juan Julian. In a cigar factory owned by Santiago, the family's patriarch, the lector reads Anna Karenina and the play's action is reminiscent of Tolstoy's plot. As the story unfolds, infidelity, financial problems, and violence spring to the surface as the factory workers struggle with their new-found understanding of life and relationships. Conchita, Santiago’s daughter, confronts her husband, Palomo, about his extramarital affairs, and Palomo becomes aware of a budding relationship between his wife and Juan Julian. Cheche, Santiago’s half brother, tries to take over the factory, and Santiago has to admit to his wife that he is neck-deep in gambling debt. Instead of discovering the love and acceptance they seek, the family is met with tragedy in the end, just as in the story of Anna Karenina.
How This Play Could be Used
Obviously, this play would make a great companion to a classroom reading of Anna Karenina. A comparison between to the two texts could inspire a debate about the use of modernizing older texts and the importance of maintaining tradition. Literary tropes or archetypes could be examined by way of analyzing how they change depending on the historical and cultural context in which they are placed.
It could also open up a meaningful discussion about how immigrant and exile groups make space and community upon arriving in America. This could connect to how integral various immigrant groups have been in the industrialization of America, as well as in today's America, as well as how they are being treated by the current political administration.
Lorca in a Green Dress
Synopsis
Lorca in a Green Dress tells the story of the life, death, and imagined afterlife of Spanish poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca. The actual story of García Lorca's murder is shrouded in mystery though it is likely that he was gunned down by the Spanish Nationalist militia. Here, Nilo Cruz examines the mystery of both García Lorca's death and life by presenting a cast of characters that each represent a different facet of the author's personality--Lorca with Bicycle Pants, his childhood self; Lorca as a Woman, his feminine aspect and female characters, the women he’s loved and with whom he’s identified; Lorca in a White Suit, the successful writer, his public face; and the titular Lorca in a Green Dress, his closeted desires and most private self. All of these characters are stuck in a sort of actor's purgatory, and are charged with the task of convincing the newly-killed Lorca with Blood of his fatal and final demise through a series of reenactments from the author's biography.
How This Play Could Be Used
The manner in which García Lorca's alternate personae attempt to simultaneously reenact and question the events of his life is strikingly reminiscent of many of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed theatrical interventions. At times the characters double as spect-actors, engaging in a simultaneous dramaturgy not unlike Forum Theatre. At other times, one character will tell a story while the others enact it, and are often corrected by the storyteller, in a manner similar to Analytical Theatre. This play would complement a study of Theatre of the Oppressed nicely, demonstrating a very different stylistic interpretation of the genre.
A classroom analysis of Lorca in a Green Dress should not be undertaken without a strong grounding in the historical, political and social context of the Spanish Civil War. Much of the mystery surrounding Federico García Lorca is owed to the fascist endeavors of rewriting history, which makes Cruz' analysis of it that much more rich, nuanced, and indeed, political.
Comprehensive List of Plays
Plays
Night Train to Boliña - Magic Theater, San Francisco, CA, 1994
A Park in Our House - McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ, 1995
Dancing on Her Knees - Joseph Papp Public Theater, New York, NY, 1996
Two Sisters and a Piano - McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ, 1999
A Bicycle Country - Florida Stage, Manalapan, FL,1999
Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams - New Theatre, Coral Gables, FL, 2001
Anna in the Tropics - New Theatre, Coral Gables, FL, 2002
(Nominated) Outer Critics Circle Awards - 2004 - John Gassner Playwriting Award
(Nominated) Tony Awards - 2004 - Best Play
(Winner) The Pulitzer Prize - 2003 - The Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Lorca in a Green Dress - Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, OR, 2003
Capricho - McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ, 2003
Beauty of the Father - New Theatre, Coral Gables, FL, 2004
The Color of Desire - Actor’s Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre, Coral Gables, FL, 2010
Hurricane - Ringling National Arts Festival, Sarasota, FL, 2010
Sotto Voce - Theatre for the New City, New York, NY, 2014
Bathing in Moonlight - McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ, 2016
Musicals
Havana – music by Frank Wildhorn, lyrics by Jack Murphy, book by Nilo Cruz
Translations
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings –children's play that is an adaptation of a short story by Gabriel García Márquez
Doña Rosita the Spinster – by Federico García Lorca
The House of Bernarda Alba – by Federico García Lorca
Life is a Dream – by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Ay, Carmela! - by José Sanchis Sinisterra
Bibliography
Breslauer, Jan. "Theater; Lifting an Embargo on the Past Writing about His Native Cuba did Not Come Easily to Playwright Nilo Cruz, but Once He Started, He Quickly found Familiar Territory." Los Angeles Times: 42. Apr 25 1999. ProQuest. Web. 20 Mar. 2017 .
Cruz, Nilo. "Nilo Cruz & Lynn Nottage." Dramatist, vol. 12, no. 4, March/April 2010, pp. 20-28. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hus&AN=509982345&site=eds-live.
Cruz, N. & McAuliffe, J. "Interview with Nilo Cruz." The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 99 no. 2, 2000, pp. 461-470. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/30667.
Gener, Randy. "Dreamer from CUBA. (Cover Story)." American Theatre, vol. 20, no. 7, Sept. 2003, pp. 22-93. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ibh&AN=10954191&site=eds-live.
Mann, Emily. “Nilo Cruz.” BOMB Magazine, vol. 86, Winter 2004. http://bombmagazine.org/article/2626/nilo-cruz
Morales, Ed. "Steaming in Cuban: Three Plays about Cuba Inhabit Manhattan Island." American Theatre, vol. 17, no. 5, May/June 2000, pp. 28-30. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hft&AN=510002409&site=eds-live
Muñoz, J. E. "The Onus of Seeing Cuba: Nilo Cruz's Cubania." The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 99 no. 2, 2000, pp. 455-459. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/30671.
Sutton, Rebecca. “Art Talk with Playwright Nilo Cruz.” Art Works Blog, National Endowment for the Arts, October 20, 2016. https://www.arts.gov/art-works/2016/art-talk-playwright-nilocruz
Weber, Bruce. “Tapping Cuban Roots for American Drama.” New York Times, April 9, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/theater/tapping-cuban-roots-for-americandrama.html
Zink, Jack. "Poet's Ghost in the Wings; Pulitzer-Winning Playwright Nilo Cruz Feels Lorca over His Shoulder." Sun-Sentinel, 04 Jan. 2004, p. 4. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsnba&AN=0FFE075FCEAF4E5C&site=eds-live.
Web page compiled by Marta McKeown (2017)