Anna in the Tropics

by Nilo Cruz

Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

. . . there are many kinds of light.
The light of fires. The light of stars.
The light that reflects off rivers.
Light that penetrates through cracks.
Then there’s the type of light that reflects off the skin.
—Nilo Cruz, Anna in the Tropics

This lush romantic drama depicts a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of Depression-era America. Set in Ybor City (Tampa) in 1930, Cruz imagines the catalytic effect the arrival of a new "lector" (who reads Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to the workers as they toil in the cigar factory) has on a Cuban-American family. Cruz celebrates the search for identity in a new land.


"The words of Nilo Cruz waft from the stage like a scented breeze. They sparkle and prickle and swirl, enveloping those who listen in both specific place and time . . . and in timeless passions that touch us all. In Anna in the Tropics , Cruz claims his place as a storyteller of intricate craftsmanship and poetic power."— Miami Herald

“Deeply engrossing.” –Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle

“Earnestly poetic…Mr. Cruz has created a work as wistful and affectingly ambitious as its characters. Anna in the Tropics reaches for the artistic heavens -- specifically, that corner of eternity occupied by the plays of Anton Chekhov, where yearning is an existential condition.” –Ben Brantley, New York Times

Nilo Cruz is a young Cuban-American playwright whose work has been produced widely around the United States, including the Public Theater (New York, NY), South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa, CA), Magic Theatre (San Francisco, CA), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, McCarter Theater (Princeton, NJ) and New Theatre (Coral Gables, FL). His other plays include Night Train to Bolina, Two Sisters and a Piano, Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, and Anna in the Tropics (Winner of 2003 Pulitzer Prize). Mr. Cruz teaches playwriting at Yale University and lives in New York City.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Fiction, Historical Fiction, School, Read For School

85 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

Cruz'z 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.

In 2001, Cruz served as the playwright-in-residence for the New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he wrote Anna in the Tropics. Rafael de Acha, produced and directed the world premier performance of 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 Smits in the lead role.

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

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 composer Gabriela Lena Frank. To date, they have completed a set of orchestral songs, La centinela y la paloma (The Keeper and the Dove), for soprano Dawn Upshaw and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (premiered under the baton of Joana Carneiro in February 2011); The Saint Maker for soprano Jessica Rivera, mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, and the Berkeley Symphony in May 2013; Journey of the Shadow for narrator and ensemble of eleven players (San Francisco Chamber Orchestra premiering in April 2013; the Conquest Requiem for soprano, baritone, orchestra, and chorus for the Houston Symphony under the baton of Andrés Orozco-Estrada in May 2017; and Cinco Lunas de Lorca (The Five Moons of Lorca) as a digital short for countertenor, choir, and piano for the Los Angeles Opera. They are currently working on The Last Dream of Frida, an opera for the San Diego Opera whose premiere has been delayed due to COVID-19.

Cruz penned the libretto to composer Jimmy López's opera Bel Canto which had its world premiere at the Lyric Opera of Chicago on December 7, 2015.

Cruz's most recent work is Bathing in Moonlight, a world premiere featuring Raul Mendez, Priscilla Lopez, Hannia Guillen, Frankie J. Alvarez, Michael Rudko, and Katty Velasquez. Directed by Emily Mann (it has incorrectly been stated that Emily Mann directed the world premiere of Anna in the Tropics, the world premiere was directed by Rafael de Acha, artistic director of New Theatre, in Coral Gables, Florida. The following year, after being awarded the Pulitzer and Steinberg Awards, Emily Mann directed a production at the McCarter Theatre, which then was presented on Broadway.) Bathing in Moonlight ran September 9 - October 9, 2016, at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey. Bathing in Moonlight is the recipient of an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award and a 2016 Greenfield Prize.

Cruz is an alumnus of New Dramatists and has taught playwriting at Brown University, the University of Iowa and at Yale University. He presently lives in New York City and Miami.

In 2009, Cruz received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a distinguished American playwright in mid-career.

In 2010, Cruz was awarded the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) from Whittier College.