PULITZER PRIZE WINNER NILO CRUZ

July 2003
		Nilo Cruz, winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, takes your questions on his plays, playwriting and how winning the coveted prize may affect his life and work. RealAudio: Jeffrey Brown talks with Nilo Cruz, Pulitzer Prize winner for drama.

Forum introduction How much do you rely on intuition when you're composing dialogue? How much do you rely on formulas, and which do you use? Why did you feel you had to open up to the world and share your stories? Was it difficult? How did you prepare? Can I get a print copy of Anna in the Tropics? Did the idea [for the play] come to you during or soon after reading Tolstoy's masterpiece? Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Arts and Entertainment	Cruz, a young Cuban-American playwright, won the Pulitzer for his play "Anna in the Tropics". The play stars a family of cigarmakers living in the dawn of the Great Depression. Set in Tampa's Spanish-Cuban Ybor City, a cigar-making town whose business boomed toward the end of the 19th century, the play showcases the characters' lives as they unfold in the cigar factories. As the cigarmakers work, a reader or lector reads Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" aloud to the employees and Cruz uses the situation to explore the ways life and art mirror one another. Although "Anna in the Tropics" was produced in a tiny theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, it came to national attention when Miami Herald critic Christine Dolen gave it a rave review. She called it a "passionate, explosive, tender play, one filled with Cruz's poetic-evocative imagery, language that almost seems tactile." Cruz's other plays include "A Park in Our House", "Two Sisters and a Piano", "Night Train to Bolina" and "Dancing on Her Knees". Cruz has won several awards and fellowships, including two NEA/TCG National Theatre Residency grants, a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays award, and a Rockefeller Foundation grant. Cruz's plays have been produced at New York's Shakespeare Festival's Public Theatre, the New York Theatre Workshop, the Minneapolis Children's Theatre, the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Cruz has taught at the University of Iowa and Brown University. The Pulitzer Prize winner answers your questions on his plays and playwriting.