“Anna in the Tropics,” Cuban-American Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, will be the final play in the Wirtz Center’s spring 2016 Mainstage season. Presented by Northwestern’s School of Communication, the show will be peformed May 13-22, by a cast of 15 undergraduate students.
Cruz’s play is set in a cigar factory in 1929 Tampa, Fla., at a time when factory mechanization was on the rise. It follows a group of Cuban immigrants who hand roll cigars with pride, and as they toil away in the factory, a well-spoken lector arrives and reads Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” to them, igniting their passions even as they struggle to uphold tradition in the face of encroaching modernity.
The lector, played by Northwestern student Alex Quinones, is based on a uniquely Cuban tradition. The lector was hired to read novels and morning newspapers to the workers as a form of community education and entertainment, each worker pitching in part of their salary for this service.
“Essentially this is a play about the power of the art of ideas,” said Director Henry Godinez, who directed the Chicago premirere of “Anna in the Tropics” in 2005. “It’s about the imagination transporting one from their mundane domestic tasks into the poetic landscape of literature.”
Cruz’s text explores questions of tradition vs. modernity, the onslaught of technology, the struggle for power between the sexes, romantic idealism and the value of the spoken word.
“Personally, my character goes through an incredibly traumatic event in the play,” said Northwestern student Isabella Gerasole, who plays Marela. “She draws strength from Anna Karenina, the novel the lector reads aloud, and she is able to push on by continuing to dream. Marela almost floats above the ground, and though some may try to bog her down she believes enough in the magic of literature and her own convictions to remain herself.”
Godinez is professor in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University and resident artistic associate at the Goodman Theatre, where he directs the Latino Theatre Festival. Godinez came to the United States at age 3 as a Cuban refugee in 1961, along with nine siblings and his single mother. Godinez prides himself in championing Latino theatre, looking for works that are both engaging and which focus on universal truths.
“In a university setting there is a huge opportunity to expose students, administration and community to cultures other than their own,” Godinez said. “With the timelines of recent transitions in U.S./Cuban relations, I see the opportunity to plant seeds for the future, to try and create a ripple effect to impact the citizens these students will become.”
Lucía Godínez, (daughter of Henry Godinez), plays Ofelia, who runs the cigar factory alongside her husband, Santiago. “If it were up to Ofelia, she would be in charge of the factory,” she said. “I see a lot of my Cuban grandmother in Ofelia — I keep an old black and white photo of her in the front of my script to constantly remind myself of her strength, resilience and sass. She embodies the fortitude and drive of those who immigrate to the United States, working her fingers to the bone so that her children and grandchildren can have better opportunities and better lives.”
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‘Anna in the Tropics’
When: May 13-22
Where: Northwestern’s Josephine Louis Theater, 20 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston
Tickets: $5-$25
Contact: 847-491-7282; https://www.communication.northwestern.edu/wirtz