Pulitzer-winning play from Miami opens in Cuba
HAVANA – An authentic privilege and delight for Cubans on the island was the presentation of the 2003 play “Anna in the Tropics,” by Nilo Cruz, the only Cuban-American to win a famed Pulitzer Prize.
As reported by Progreso Semanal, actors from both sides of the Straits came together in the drama group El Público for six performances of the play, which had been expected here for many years. Audiences filled the Trianón Theater, once a movie house with a 300-seat capacity.
A native of Cárdenas in Matanzas province, Nilo Cruz left Cuba at the age of 8, in 1968. He has had a long and successful career that includes writing film scripts and opera librettos. One of his works, “Lorca in a Green Dress,” was published here in an anthology of the current Cuban theater.
Cuban actors living in Florida – Liliam Rentería, Mabel Roch and Carlos Miguel Caballero – joined a select group from El Público, formed by Fernando Hechavarría, Osvado Doimeadiós, Clara de la Caridad González, Yanier Palmero and the unforgettable “Juan of the Dead,” Alexis Díaz de Villegas, one of the Cuban theater’s top performers.
According to critic Norge Espinosa Mendoza, “the successive combination of fantasy (noted by one of the members of the Pulitzer jury), reality, poetry and ordinary gestures reaches in [Cruz’s] best plays an intensity that makes us acknowledge him as a craftsman of the language. ‘Anna in the Tropics’ shows us a Cuba imagined from a distance, invoked from Ybor City in 1929 Tampa in a small cigar factory where a group of immigrants from the island reconstruct the land they left behind.”
[Translator’s Note: The play’s title alludes to “Anna Karenina,” the novel being read to cigar rollers at the factory and its effect on the workers.]
In an exclusive interview with Progreso Semanal, Carlos Díaz, dramatist and director of El Público, called it a play “with many winks of Cubanness. One of the most important things about ‘Anna’s’ success is that it is finally being shown in Havana. There was no silence but there was expectation to see the premiere.”
For “Anna in the Tropics” to arrive in Cuba after multiple vicissitudes (among them the detention in Customs for several days of a huge U.S. flag, the largest to arrive in Cuba since 1959 and an indispensable element in the play) is due to large measure to the intentions and efforts of FUNDarte, whose founder and executive director, Cuban-American Ever Chávez, also spoke with Progreso Semanal.
“The possibility of continuing to do ensemble work is admirable,” said Chávez. “Shows like this one allow the actors in the diaspora to share with their public and in our joint projects. Looking to the future, we’re working on the topic of emigration, from a sociological perspective, let us say.”
Along with FUNDarte and El Público, the play’s sponsors are the Digital Archives of the Cuban Theater, the University of Miami’s Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the Department of Theater Arts, with the cooperation of Xael Charters Inc.
“This project,” the program says, “is part of the program of International Cultural Exchange of the Department of Cultural Affairs of Miami-Dade County, U.S., between artists in Miami and Havana.”
The welcome given to “Anna of the Tropics” in Havana has been more than relevant, mostly from young people who filled the hall at each of its performances. Every day, a sign taped to the ticket booth proclaimed “Sold Out.”
The Havana of Nilo Cruz and many others was the first to show us a dreamy Anna. A second presentation will be at the Colony Theater in Miami Beach, next month.
Let us hope that no steamroller shows up outside the Colony to accuse poor Anna [Karenina] of being a communist just because of her Russian origin and her visit to this city.
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“Anna in the Tropics” will be presented at the Colony Theater in Miami Beach, Nov. 22-24.
