HYLTON: Your winning of the Pulitzer for ANNA IN THE TROPICS was unusual in the sense that the play was not staged in a New York theater prior to winning the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Can you tell me a little bit about your perspectives on regional theater and the opportunities that it affords?

CRUZ: You know there is a lot of great theater being done outside of New York. As a matter of fact we get a chance to see plays in regional theaters that never would get a shot in New York. And that’s because in New York you have to be much safer because if you get a bad review usually it’s the end of the play. But there are a lot of wonderful theaters out there that are doing great work and they need to be acknowledged as being in the forefront. When you think about New York there are so many politics involved. I realized that doing a play on Broadway is not necessarily about having a good script. It’s about so many other things. It’s about getting an actor that will bring audiences because when you are on Broadway it’s just a totally different type of arena. Because people don’t just go to see a play. Also because it is so geared towards tourists who come in from out of town so…

HYLTON: They want to see a name.

CRUZ: I thought doing a play on Broadway was going to be easy. I wrote the play and I was very much involved in the rehearsal process. I did my work and figured it was done. This was not reality. I had to do a lot of legwork and do an enormous amount of interviews just to keep the show up. I had to do a lot of meetings and give ideas to the publicity people and do outreach work. I had to be very involved and still I do not feel like I did enough. You have to be very on top of things.

HYLTON: I just interviewed Stephen Belber who wrote MATCH, which was recently on Broadway. He was saying how important it was that he got Liotta and Langella involved because it would have been very difficult to get it staged without them.

CRUZ: I had Jimmy Smitts who was very well known but I feel like we may have needed even more…two or three more to really sell it.

HYLTON: I want to turn the questions to your writing for a moment. Your language is very lyrical. I know you say that music is instrumental to your work. Do you listen to something in particular when you write?

CRUZ: I listen to music a lot.

HYLTON: Recently I read an interview with Paula Vogel, who I know taught you at Brown in her playwriting program, and she said she would isolate herself in a cabin and make massive mixes of music that she would listen to in her cabin as she wrote her plays like HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE.

CRUZ: I pay attention to music, when I am away from writing. In particular I look at its structure and different movements because I feel like a theater piece must have the same kind of movements or diversion that music has. So it is something that I am interested in. I don't make a habit of listening to music when I write. Writing is not a hobby for me and I don't want it to feel like leisure. I think because English is my second language I feel like I need to make sure that what I write is grammatically correct and that it makes sense what I am saying because I could be thinking of it in Spanish and I might construct a sentence the way I think about it in Spanish but I can't do that in English. Also because all of my characters are Latino and I want to capture that sensibility and that way of thinking in the writing so again one thing is listening to the way the character speaks. The other is when I write it sometimes I have to restructure the lines. I sometimes catch myself saying things in English but it’s really the way I think about it in Spanish. I have to be very careful. I just leave sometimes things the way they are because they make sense in English but I don’t think a North American person would say things this way. That’s the beauty of it. I think the language for the stage has to be really creative. I’m not interested in sitting and listening to dull language. I think the language has to have a sort of popularity or a need to enter into another level of profoundness.

HYLTON: Have you written any plays in Spanish? And would you do that?

CRUZ: No. I’ve always been interested in American Theater and if I limited myself to Spanish, I would be very limited in my potential venues at least in this country. I could take my plays to Latin America but in Latin America playwrights are secondary and it is a director’s world. In America and in England the voice of the playwright is very important.

HYLTON: I understand you have a new play coming out. Could you tell me a little bit about what you’ve been working on?

CRUZ: Seattle just finished doing a new play that first premiered in Miami this last January. And it's sort of a co-production of two theaters. It's a love triangle story called BEAUTY OF THE FATHER. It's a co-premiere of two theaters and after premiering in Miami it then premiered in Seattle. It was great. It was great working with this group. Usually with my work I learn in productions. I see where the play is at, at that point. I feel like you learn so much from the audience. And working with the set designer and the group of actors and the director. I directed the play in Miami myself and then went back and rewrote it and removed segments and added new portions. And I was really happy with this new draft of the play that we did in Seattle. It's a totally different cast and different production but we’re sharing the world premiere because both theaters became interested in the show at the same time. So my agent worked it out where both theaters could get the rights to the world premiere. And I was very happy with it. And now I'm preparing to do the same play in New York. So I will do some more work between here and then.

Nilo Cruz’s new play, BEAUTY OF THE FATHER will premiere in New York City in Manhattan Theater Club’s 2004-2005 Season (although the MTC’s website does not mention any dates for the production as of now). For more information on upcoming MTC productions check out their website at http://www.mtc-nyc.org.

Broadway Closings/Openings Notes: Both Doug Wright’s Pulitzer Prize winning play I AM MY OWN WIFE and the fantastic play GOLDA’s BALCONY are closing. Don’t miss the opportunity to see either of these fantastic one-person shows. For more information on purchasing tickets and the closing dates visit www.Playbill.com.

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