[NEohioPAL]Nilo Cruz Coming To Cleveland Public Library Sept. 24!

[Donald Boozer]

Cleveland Public Library will kick off its 2006-2007 Writers and
Writers Series on Sunday, September 24, at 2 p.m. with an appearance
by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Nilo Cruz.
 
The program will take place at the Main Library, 325 Superior Avenue,
in the Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium.
 
Drawing on experiences from his own life, Cuban-born Cruz is the first
Latino to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2003). His remarkable
tragicomedy, Anna in the Tropics, is also the rare play to win the
Pulitzer prior to its New York production.
 
Set in 1929 in a small town near Tampa, Florida, on the
eve of the Great Depression, Anna in the Tropics examines the lives of
the workers in a Cuban-American cigar factory. In those days, cigars
were still being rolled by hand and lectors, or readers, were still
employed to read aloud to the workers while they performed their
repetitive tasks. When the handsome new lector, Juan Julian begins to
read from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, he unwittingly becomes the catalyst
for a series of events that all-too closely parallele the twists and
turns of Tolstoy's great novel.
 
Nilo Cruz was 10 years old when he arrived in the United
States with his parents. Penniless and in search of a new start, his
father found work in a shoe store, while his mother went to work in a
purse factory. The Cuban-American experience is a common theme running
through Cruz's plays, many of which have appeared in theaters
throughout the United States.
 
His numerous credits include Night Train to Bolina,
Dancing on Her Knees, A Park in Our House, Two Sisters and a Piano, A
Bicycle Country, Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, Lorca in a Green
Dress and, making its Broadway debut earlier this year, Beauty of the
Father.
 
Nilo Cruz is the recipient of numerous awards and
fellowships. He has taught drama and playwriting at Brown University,
the University of Iowa and at Yale. He currently resides in New York.
 
For more information, go to www.cpl.org. or call (216)
623-2800.




**************************
Donald Boozer, Literature Department
Cleveland Public Library
325 Superior Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44114
donald.boozer at cpl.org
216-623-2881 / 216-623-7050 (fax)
http://www.cpl.org