New Theatre announces world premiere of Nilo Cruz play

What: Beauty of the Father, by Nilo Cruz. Where: New Theatre, 4120 Laguna Street, Coral Gables. Preview Friday January 2, 2004, at 8 p.m. Press/Opening Night Saturday January 3, 2004, at 8 p.m. Followed by an opening night party at the theatre. Running: Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. Through February 15. Please note NO 5:30 p.m. performances on the first and last weekends of the run. Tickets: $20 preview $70 opening night $50 First Sunday (includes Brunch) $40 weekends $35 Thursdays and 5:30 pm shows on Sundays $5 off for Seniors (65 +) on Sundays $7 Students (all shows except opening weekend) Theatre League of South Florida members: $15 (Rush tickets) Actors’ Equity members: $15 (Rush tickets) BOX OFFICE FOR TICKETS (305) 443 5909 Additional information at www.new-theatre.org

Related Events:

Friday, December 5 at 8 p.m. – An informal talk by Nilo Cruz at Florida International University, Tamiami Campus, Wertheim Performing Arts Centre.

Saturday, December 13 at 6 p.m. – A book signing of Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics at Coral Gables’ Books and Books with the playwright, who will read excerpts from his work.

Sunday December 28, 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. – Open Technical Rehearsal with light brunch, for New Theatre subscribers only.

Saturday January 3, 8 p.m. – Opening Night, followed by a party with the playwright and cast at New Theatre.

Sunday January 4, 1 p.m. – Meet’n’Greet Brunch (courtesy of Wild Oats) and book-signing with playwright, followed by 2:15 p.m. performance of play and a post-show conversation with the playwright, director, and cast. FREE to New Theatre subscribers. $50 brunch and show all others. Autographed copies of Pulitzer Prize winning play Anna in the Tropics for sale at the theatre.

Friday January 23, 7 p.m. – An Evening with Nilo Cruz at the Key Biscayne home of Paula and Jack Levine. The event will include cocktails, gourmet dinner, a presentation of excerpts from the playwright’s works, autographed copies of Anna in the Tropics, and a raffle of donated art and other gifts, for a tax-deductible contribution to New Theatre of $150 per person. For information contact 305. 443 5909).

Saturday January 24, 4 p.m. – An informal conversation with playwright Nilo Cruz and Christine Dolen, Theatre Critic for The Miami Herald. At New Theatre. Open admission and seating.

Background Nilo Cruz was born in Cuba and came to the United States on a Freedom Flight shortly before his 10th birthday. He grew up in Miami and attended Miami-Dade College, later obtaining his Master's Degree in playwriting at Brown University, where he studied with Paula Vogel (Pulitzer winner for How I Learned To Drive). He is the author of Night Train to Bolina (1994), A Park in Our House (1995), Dancing on Her Knees (1996), Two Sisters and a Piano (1998), A Bicycle Country (1999), Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams (2001; world premiere New Theatre), A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings (2002), Anna in the Tropics (2002; world premiere New Theatre), Lorca in a Green Dress (2003), and Beauty of the Father (2004; world premiere New Theatre).

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Cruz won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for drama for Anna in the Tropics, which was commissioned by and had its world premiere at New Theatre in October 2002, becoming the first Hispanic playwright to win that honor. The play also won the American Theatre Critics' Association/Steinberg New Play Award.

The play, created at New Theatre with the assistance of a Theatre Communications Group’s Playwright-in- Residence grant as well as a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, has gone on to receive productions at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre, Southern California’s South Coast Rep, New Jersey’s McCarter Theatre, and now on Broadway, where it opened on November 16, 2003 at the Royale Theatre. London’s Donmar Warehouse Theatre has optioned the play for a West End run next year. The play is now being translated into German, Spanish, and French for planned future European productions, and is published by Theatre Communications Group.

“Grand emotions, savored history and life-changing art swirl through Nilo Cruz's tender, impassioned writing.”

The words are by Miami Herald’s Theatre Critic Christine Dolen. New Theatre’s Founding Artistic Director Rafael de Acha is no stranger to Nilo Cruz’s work or that of many other early-career Florida playwrights. Through 18 seasons at New Theatre he has nurtured the work of playwrights such as Nilo Cruz and now looks forward to staging the third Cruz play that the company will produce. New Theatre will share the world premiere of Beauty of the Father with Seattle’s estimable Seattle Rep, whose Artistic Director Sharon Ott will direct a production of the play in April of 2004.

Speaking about Beauty of the Father, Rafael de Acha comments
“Nilo’s work is classical, in the simplest meaning of the word: spare, elegant, full of rich language, and with great parts for actors. Nilo’s sensibilities about life in general and theatre in particular are very close to mine, for we both love our Cuban culture, understand our quirks, and celebrate our uniqueness. Beauty of the Father is about family and coming back home and forgiving and loving. It is an exultant play that celebrates life and a no-holds barred kind of love: slightly messy and muscular and all-consuming.

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It is an intimate, 5-character play, with intricate relationships and lots of sunlight and music. All of us at New Theatre are very excited about doing this wondrous play.”

Set in a small town in Southern Spain, today, Beauty of the Father depicts the relationships that interweave in the lives of Emiliano, an artist (Roberto Escobar), and the residents of his household: Paquita (Teresa Maria Rojas), his sometime mistress and housekeeper, Karim (Euriamis Losada), his Moroccan houseboy-boyfriend, and Emiliano’s estranged daughter Marina (Ursula Freundlich), newly-arrived from he Unites States after the death of her American mother.

Emiliano has yet another unseen though welcome resident. It is a ghost, or maybe an angel, or maybe just a figment of his imagination: Federico Garcia Lorca, a Spanish poet and playwright (Carlos Orizondo). How the angelic and ironic Lorca literally saves Emiliano’s life is at the dramatic center of this humorous and heartfelt family saga.

The cast of Beauty of the Father is helmed by Spanish-language television star Roberto Escobar (Emiliano), here in his first New Theatre stint. Also appearing for the first time at New Theatre, Teresa Maria Rojas (Paquita) will be working with Nilo Cruz, the young man she mentored at Miami Dade College over 20 years ago. Young company regular Ursula Freundlich (Marina) returns to the New Theatre stage after her triumphant Viola in Twelfth Night last summer. Carlos Orizondo (Lorca) adds yet another Nilo Cruz play to his resume, having appeared at New Theatre
in Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, Anna in the Tropics, and at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in A Bicycle Country. Euriamis Losada, who has been garnering good notices recently as Edmund in Long Day’s Journey Into Night and as Cassio in Othello at New Theatre, as well as in the title role of Bat Boy at the Miami Shores Performing Arts Theater, rounds out the cast as Karim.

The set designer is Adrian W. Jones, another new arrival at New Theatre, who, in spite of his youth, is a respected scene designer with a thriving career in New York and in the regional theatre. New Theatre’s resident lighting designer and Carbonell winner Travis Neff will create the lighting for the show. Sound Design is by Ozzie Quintana. Costumes and props are by Caron Grant. New Theatre gratefully acknowledges the generous support of this production by Jay Harris.

Diciembre - 2003