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For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Seven thousand five hundred dollars ($7,500).

Anna in the Tropics, by Nilo Cruz

Lee Bollinger and Nilo Cruz

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger (left) presents Nilo Cruz with the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Winning Work

Anna in the Tropics

The play was commissioned by New Theatre with the support of a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts. Nilo Cruz was playwright-in-residence at New Theatre during the 2001-2002 season, and his residency was supported by a grant from Theatre Communications Group, Vivendi Universal, and The National Endowment for the Arts.

Nilo Cruz wrote the play to be premiered at New Theatre during this season (2002-2003). The production will receive additional support from Jay Harris, and from The Manny and Ruthy Cohen Foundation.

ANNA IN THE TROPICS is a play set in Ybor City, (Tampa), Florida in 1930. The romantic drama deals with a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of America in the midst of the Depression.

(From the New Theatre Web site)

Biography

Nilo Cruz is a young Cuban-American playwright whose work has been produced widely around the United States. His plays are many and 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 (World premiere at New Theatre 2001), Lorca in a Green Dress, Beauty of the Father, and translations of Lorca's Doña Rosita the Spinster and The House of Bernarda Alba.

Nilo has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including two NEA/TCG National Theatre Artist Residency grants, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, San Francisco's W. Alton Jones award and a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays award. His work has been seen at the McCarter Theatre in New Jersey, at New York's Shakespeare Festival's Public Theatre, at South Coast Rep, at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, New York Theatre Workshop, Magic Theatre, Minneapolis Children's Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Washington's Studio Theatre, Florida Stage, The Coconut Grove Playhouse, and at New Theatre, where his Ybor City (working title) will receive its world premiere in October of 2002, and where he is Playwright-in-Residence.

 

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2003:

The Jury

Linda Winer(chair )

drama critic

Misha Berson

drama critic

Dominic Papatola

chief drama critic

Bruce Weber

theater critic

Edwin Wilson

professor and director, Martin E. Segal Theater Center

Winners in Drama

2003 Prize Winners

Diana K. Sugg

For her absorbing, often poignant stories that illuminated complex medical issues through the lives of people.