In the Know

NILO CRUZ (he/him) (PLAYWRIGHT), a Cuban-American, gained national prominence in 2003 when he won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for his play Anna in the Tropics, a Depression-era tale about migrant Cubans working in a Tampa, Fla., cigar factory, for which he also received a Steinberg Award and Tony Award nomination. He has become known for his ability to successfully weave strains of magic realism and other literary traditions into his works.

His plays include A Park in Our House; Two Sisters and a Piano; A Bicycle Country; Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams; Lorca in a Green Dress; Hurricane; Sotto Voce; Bathing in Moonlight and Hotel Desiderium.  His work has been seen at numerous theaters around the country and around the world in Canada, England, France, Australia, Germany, Belarus, Russia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Japan and Spain.

As a lyricist, he is a frequent collaborator with composer Gabriela Lena Frank. He has written the libretti for The Conquest requiem and The Last Dream of Frida and Diego, which just premiered in San Diego. Cruz also adapted Ann Patchett’s 2001 novel Bel Canto for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, with Peruvian composer Jimmy López and recently premiered the Dreamers oratorio by López at Cal Performance in Berkeley, Calif.  His musical endeavors inspired his play Exquisite Agony, about a grieving opera singer, who had performed in countless operas, but now engages in a transgressive endeavor to find fragments of her late husband, who was a composer killed in a car accident.

In the world of film, he co-wrote the screenplay Castro’s Daughter with Oscar winner Bobby Moresco and adapted his play Anna in the Tropics for Mankind Entertainment.

Cruz, who received an M.F.A. from Brown University and an honorary doctorate degree from Whittier College, has thrice previously served as a playwright-in-residence: In 2000, for the McCarter Theatre, in Princeton, N.J., in 2001 for the New Theatre in Coral Gables, Fla., which commissioned Anna in the Tropics, and 2021 at UCLA through a Hearst Foundation Grant.  Cruz has also taught drama at Yale, Brown, the University of Iowa and the University of Miami. He is a member of the New Dramatists.