Theater News

Pulitzer Prize Awarded to Nilo Cruz for Anna in the Tropics


Nilo Cruz
Nilo Cruz

It has just been announced that author Nilo Cruz is the winner of the the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Anna in the Tropics.

Commissioned by the New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where Cruz served as playwright-in-residence during the 2001-2002 season, the play was presented there from October 12 through November 10, 2002. Set in Ybor City (Tampa), Florida in 1930, Anna in the Tropics is a romantic drama that tells the story of a family of cigar makers set against the backdrop of America during the Great Depression.

Contacted by TheaterMania this afternoon, Rafael de Acha, artistic director of the New Theatre, had this to say about Cruz’s winning of the Pulitzer: “I’m still wiping away the tears, as corny as that sounds. I’m totally overwhelmed by the news. We will be doing another of Nilo’s plays, Beauty of the Father, in our upcoming season. I’m so proud of him.”

Nilo Cruz is a Cuban-American playwright whose work has been produced widely throughout the United States. Among his plays are Night Train to Bolina, Dancing on Her Knees, A Park in Our House, Two Sisters and a Piano, and A Bicycle Country. His previous awards and fellowships include 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. Cruz’s work has been seen at the Public Theater and the New York Theatre Workshop in NYC, the McCarter Theatre in New Jersey, the South Coast Rep, the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., and many other venues.