Nilo Cruz
Nilo Cruz | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1960 (age 63–64) Matanzas, Cuba |
| Occupation | Playwright, pedagogue |
| Nationality | Cuban-American |
| Alma mater | Miami Dade College Brown University |
| Notable works | Two Sisters and a Piano |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2003) |
Nilo Cruz (born 1960) is a 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.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).
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. 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; and Journey of the Shadow for narrator and ensemble of eleven players (San Francisco Chamber Orchestra premiering in April 2013.
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.[1]
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 premier of "Anna in the Tropics." The world premier 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 is running September 9 - October 9, 2016 at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ. 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, has taught playwriting at Brown University, the University of Iowa and at Yale University. He presently lives in New York City and Miami.
Awards and honors
In 2009, Cruz received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a distinguished American playwright in mid-career.
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)
- Soto Voce (2014)
- Bathing in Moonlight (2016)
- Exquisita Agonía (Exquisite Agony) (2018)[2]
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
- ^ "Bel Canto". Lyric Opera of Chicago. Retrieved 26 June 2015.
- ^ https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/theater/exquisite-agony-review.html?module=WatchingPortal®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=9&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F06%2F11%2Ftheater%2Fexquisite-agony-review.html&eventName=Watching-article-click
External links
- Nilo Cruz at the Internet Broadway Database
- Nilo Cruz at IMDb
- 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
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
- 1960 births
- Living people
- 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
- Brown University alumni
- American writers of Cuban descent
- Cuban emigrants to the United States
- American male dramatists and playwrights
- Gay writers
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners
- Hispanic and Latino American dramatists and playwrights
- 21st-century American dramatists and playwrights
- People from Matanzas
- American opera librettists
- Exiles of the Cuban Revolution in the United States
- 20th-century American male writers
- 21st-century American male writers