TWO SISTERS AND A PIANO

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.

Paul Tate Depoo III (Scenic and Projection Design) is a scenic, projection, and production designer based in New York. His designs with Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage include: Guys and Dolls, 50 Years of Broadway, The Music Man, The Who’s Tommy, Footloose, and Next to Normal. He recently was the production designer for Usher’s Las Vegas residency, and Turandot in Vienna, Austria on the world’s largest opera stage. In 2020, he received the Helen Hayes award for ‘Outstanding Scenic Design’ for his production of Grand Hotel at Signature Theatre where he also designed Titanic, A Little Night Music, Blackbeard, and Crazy for You. DePoo served as the Creative Director for The Great Work Begins: Scenes from Angels in America, benefiting amfAR’s Fund to Fight COVID-19 which was listed as The New York Times’s top production of the year. He recently worked on Dear World with New York City Center Encores, the Dancing with the Stars National Tour, and Sunset Boulevard at The Kennedy Center. He will make his Broadway debut this summer TBA. www.pauldepoo.com. 

ANITA YAVICH (Costume Designer) Broadway: Fool for Love, Venus in Fur, Chinglish, and Anna in the Tropics. New York design credits include Signature: Letters from Max, Thom Pain, Big Love, Kung Fu, Golden Child and Iphigenia 2.0; Public: Soft Power, Oedipus El Rey; Lynn Redgrave Theatre: The View Upstairs ; Classic Stage: Nathan the Wise, Caucasian Chalk Circle, Orlando, New Jerusalem and Texts for Nothing ; MCC: Only Gold, The Legend of Georgia McBride, The Submission, Coraline the Musical, The Wooden Breeks; MTC: The Best We Could, The Explorer’s Club. Opera:  Aida at San Francisco Opera; Cyrano De Bergerac at La Scala, Met Opera; Les Troyens Met Opera.  Film: Puppet and Mask designer: Megalopolis; Puppet and Costume designer: The Sound Of Music at Salzburger Marionetten Theater. Awards: Obie, Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, and the Irene Shariff Young Master Award.  Her upcoming project is designing costumes for Der Ring Des Nibelungen for Opera Australia in Brisbane.

Lucrecia Briceno is a Peruvian artist currently based in Brooklyn. Much of her work has been in association with artists developing innovative and original pieces. Her work includes theatre, opera, puppetry & dance, as well as collaborations in several non-performance projects. Her designs have been presented at such venues as Spoleto USA, The Public Theater, Oxford Playhouse (UK), Arena Stage, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dallas Theatre Center, BAM (Fischer), Kennedy Center, Atlas Performing Arts (DC), Berlind Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, La Mama ETC, Birmingham Repertory (UK), Culture Project, Pregones Theatre/PRTT, Intar, HERE Arts Center, Soho Rep, Ohio Theatre, Irondale Center, among many others. Internationally her work has been seen in Caracas, Peru, Turkey, Scotland, Seoul, Bogota, Norway, and England. Her design work for “Crime and Punishment” was part of the Venezuelan delegation for the 2015 Prague Quadrennial. She is an associate artist with The Civilians, co-artistic director of Anonymous Ensemble, and resident designer with Pregones Theatre/PRTT and La Micro; she has also been a guest artist/lecturer at NYU, Princeton University, Hunter College, the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and JMU. MFA: NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Member of 829.

SALOMON LERNER (Sound designer & Composer) is originally from Caracas, Venezuela and lives in New York City. Holds an M.F.A. from NYU’s Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and majored in Film Scoring at the Berklee College of Music. His music has been performed at various theater venues including The Public Theater’s Newman Stage and La Mama’s Ellen Stewart Theater (New York, NY), Barrington Stage Company (Pittsfield, MA), and the Colony Theatre (Miami Beach, FL); at various dance spaces including The Alchemical Laboratory, Martha Graham Studios, Bryant Park, The Brooklyn Botanic Garden; and on several Films and TV shows. www.salomonlerner.com

CHA RAMOS (she/ella) (INTIMACY CONSULTANT) is a bilingual, multidisciplinary theatre artist with a metric montón of books, swords, and altars in her NYC apartment. As an artist, Cha is invested in telling underrepresented stories with a focus on the power of movement, and inviting fellow artists into deep self-listening, consensual collaboration, and practiced autonomy. Current projects include: associate intimacy direction for Company and Jagged Little Pill on Broadway, dramaturgy for a new queer adaptation of Anna Karenina, performing with the Vixens en Garde, teaching and developing curriculum with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, and ongoing workshops of her own original plays Fire Burn Them and Like to the Gods. More info at www.CallMeCha.com.

Tom Watson is head of the wig and makeup department at the Metropolitan Opera. He has designed wigs for more than 55 Broadway productions. Current and recent Broadway designs include Annie, The Big Knife, The Assembled Parties, An Enemy of the People, Picnic, A Christmas Story, Harvey, Million Dollar Quartet, Rock of Ages, Wicked, How to Succeed…, The Addams Family, Promises, Promises, South Pacific, Sondheim on Sondheim, A View from the Bridge, and Sunday in the Park with George.

KATE CROASDALE (PRODUCTION STATE MANAGER) is delighted to return to Two River after stage managing Two Sisters and a Piano, Guadalupe in the Guest Room, The Tricky Part and All The Rage. Broadway: Sea Wall/A Life, Sunday in the Park with George, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Ghost The Musical, Dead Accounts and Relatively Speaking. Off-Broadway Credits include: Stargazers (Page 73), Mary Gets Hers (Playwrights Realm) and Mud/Drowning (Mabou Mines). Kate has also worked with: City Center Encores!, The Public Theater, NAATCO, EST, New York Stage and Film, Bay Street Theater and Kaimera Productions. She is proud to be a core teacher for the Peridance Certificate Program. 

ALEX MURPHY (ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER) (he/him/they) returns to Two River Theater after Stage Managing the world premiere of Kate Hamill’s adaptation of The Scarlet Letter. Previous Two River Theater credits include: Two Sisters and a Piano, Wine in the Wilderness.  Regional: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer the Musical, Justice at War (Coterie Theatre); A Christmas Carol, Still Ready (Actors Theatre of Louisville), American Prophet (Arena Stage). National Tour: The Prom. Off-Broadway: The Harder They Come, Romeo and Bernadette, Two’s a Crowd. Alex was the Resident Stage Manager for Kansas City Actors Theatre in Kansas City, MO, for three seasons, working on such productions as Death and the Maiden, And Then There Were None, and Skylight. 

Casting Director

Associate Casting Director