- Nilo Cruz
-
Nilo Cruz 
Nilo Cruz at Dartmouth College, March 5, 2007Born 1960 (age 50–51)
Matanzas, CubaOccupation Playwright Nationality United States / Cuba Alma mater Brown University Information Notable work(s) Two Sisters and a Piano Magnum opus Anna in the Tropics Awards Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2003) Nilo Cruz (born 1960) is an Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, Anna in the Tropics, he became the first Latino so honored.[1]
Contents
Biography
Early years
Cruz was born to Tina and Nilo Cruz, Sr. in Matanzas, Cuba. The family immigrated to the "Little Havana" in Miami, Florida in 1970 on a Freedom Flight, and eventually naturalised to the United States. His interest in theater began with acting and directing in the early 1980s. He studied theater first at Miami-Dade Community College, later moving to New York City, where Cruz studied under fellow Cuban María Irene Fornés. Fornes recommended Cruz to Paula Vogel who was teaching at Brown University where he would later receive his M.F.A. in 1994.
Career
In 2001, he served as the playwright-in-residence for the New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he wrote Anna in the Tropics, winner of the 2003 Pulitzer and the Steinberg Award for Best New Play. A year later it received its Broadway premiere with Jimmy Smitts in the lead role. He also has a sister named Clara Cruz who works as a Spanish teacher in Hialeah Gardens Elementary School in Hialeah, Florida.
Some of the theatres that have developed and performed his works include New York’s Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Pasadena Playhouse, McCarter Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Repertory, The Alliance, New Theatre, Florida Stage and the Coconut Grove Playhouse.
Cruz wrote the book of the Frank Wildhorn/Jack Murphy musical Havana. Its scheduled world premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse has been delayed by the theatre's declaration of bankruptcy in 2010.[2]
Cruz has been 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, a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays award and a USA Artist Fellowship.
Cruz is a frequent collaborator with Peruvian-American Latin Grammy composer Gabriela Lena Frank, collaborating on several operas. They recently completed a set of orchestral songs, "La centinela y la paloma" (The Keeper and the Dove), for Dawn Upshaw and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra to be premiered under the baton of Joana Carneiro in February 2011.
Cruz is an alumnus of New Dramatists, has taught playwriting at Brown University, the University of Iowa and at Yale University. He presently lives in New York City and Miami.
Work
Plays
- Dancing on Her Knees (1994)
- Night Train to Bolina (1995)
- A Park in Our House (1995)
- Two Sisters and a Piano (1998)
- A Bicycle Country (1999)
- Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams (2001)
- Anna in the Tropics (2002)
- Lorca in a Green Dress (2003)
- Capricho (2003)
- Beauty of the Father (2006)
- The Color of Desire (2010)
- Hurricane (2010)
Musicals
- Havana - music by Frank Wildhorn, lyrics by Jack Murphy, book by Cruz
Translations
- A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings - a 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
See also
References
- ^ Hilton Als (23 January 2006). "Ghosts and Hosts: Two Troubled Households". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/01/23/060123crth_theatre. Retrieved 2008-12-25.
- ^ "Pasadena Playhouse files Chapter 11 petition". Los Angeles Times. May 11, 2010. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/05/pasadena-playhouse-files-chapter-11-petition.html. Retrieved May 11, 2010.
External links
- Nilo Cruz at the Internet Broadway Database
- Nilo Cruz at the Internet Movie Database
- Nilo Cruz at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Nilo Cruz Interview by Beth Stevens on Broadway.com
- New Plays And Playwrights - Working in the Theatre Seminar video at American Theatre Wing.org, January 2004
- Bomb magazine interview
- Articles about Nilo Cruz and Life is a Dream at South Coast Repertory
Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2001–present) - David Auburn (2001)
- Suzan-Lori Parks (2002)
- Nilo Cruz (2003)
- Doug Wright (2004)
- John Patrick Shanley (2005)
- David Lindsay-Abaire (2007)
- Tracy Letts (2008)
- Lynn Nottage (2009)
- Tom Kitt / Brian Yorkey (2010)
- Bruce Norris (2011)
- Complete list
- (1918–1925)
- (1926–1950)
- (1951–1975)
- (1976–2000)
- (2001–2025)
Categories:- 1960 births
- Living people
- American dramatists and playwrights
- Brown University alumni
- American writers of Cuban descent
- Cuban dramatists and playwrights
- LGBT Hispanic and Latino American people
- LGBT people from Cuba
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners
- Hispanic and Latino American dramatists and playwrights
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
