The PlayFinder™

Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

THE STORY: ANNA IN THE TROPICS is a poignant and poetic play set in Florida in 1929 in a Cuban–American cigar factory, where cigars are still rolled by hand and "lectors" are employed to educate and entertain the workers. The arrival of a new lector is a cause for celebration, but when he begins to read aloud from Anna Karenina, he unwittingly becomes a catalyst in the lives of his avid listeners, for whom Tolstoy, the tropics, ... Read more

This play by Pulitzer Prize–winner Nilo Cruz is set in Andalusia, Spain, where the restless ghost of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca still wanders through the streets and converses with the living. BEAUTY OF THE FATHER is about a young American girl who travels to this part of the world to meet her estranged father and becomes romantically involved with his Moroccan companion. This passionate triangle explores the conflict between love and sacrifice.... Read more

Three characters whose lives seem to be moving nowhere set out to build a dream, even if that dream seems perilous. This stirring portrait of three Cuban exiles and their harrowing journey across the Caribbean Sea examines the universal themes of freedom and oppression, hope and survival.... Read more

A spirited young woman full of life, Doña Rosita spends over two decades waiting for her fiancé to return from abroad and marry her, finally losing all hope as the years pass her by. Set in Granada, Spain, the play draws symbolic parallels between Doña Rosita and the magically transformative nature of a rose called rosa mutable. In this lyrical drama, Lorca portrays what he called "the grotesque treatment of women in Spain."... Read more

A brother and a sister, whose lives were forever altered when their mother put them on a flight from Havana to the United States in 1961, return to their native land during the Pope's visit to Cuba. The brother and sister take their own path, as they search for recollection and healing. This tale of estranged siblings seeking to make sense of the childhood that was subtracted from their lives possesses an imaginative and lyrical landscape that elevates the material to a poetic ... Read more

Astrological omens predict that if King Basilio's son Segismundo is crowned, he will become a horrible tyrant who will bring destruction to his kingdom. Basilio imprisons Segismundo for life, but decades later he decides to let his son prove his ability to defy the stars. Allowed to rule the palace, Segismundo wreaks bloody vengeance on the kingdom, confirming the prediction of the stars, and the prince is returned to his prison. In Nilo Cruz's sublime translation of Calderón d... Read more

The play is set in Latin America in the mid-eighties, in an unidentified country, during the guerilla warfare. Threatened by starvation and abuse, two children flee their rural village for "the city." Dancing on a fine line between innocent fantasy and harsh reality, Mateo and Clara explore their imaginations in a world of dark mysticism and denied love.... Read more

Set in 1991, during the Pan American Games in Havana and while the Russians are pulling out of Cuba, this play portrays two sisters, Maria Celia, a novelist, and Sofia, a pianist, serving time under house arrest. Passion infiltrates politics when a lieutenant assigned to their case becomes infatuated with Maria Celia, whose literature he has been reading.... Read more