Migdalia Cruz | |
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| Born | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, plays, operas, screenplays, musicals |
| Education | Lake Erie College (BFA) Columbia University (MFA) |
| Years active | 1984–present |
| Notable works | Latino Chicago Theatre Company writer in residence Lark's Mexico/US Word Exchange Plays: Miriam's Flowers, FUR, SALT, Another Part of the House, Lucy Loves Me, Two Roberts, Satyricoño, Lolita de Lares, El Grito Del Bronx, Never Moscow |
| Notable awards | New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Playwriting/Screenwriting (2016) Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright Award (2013) NEA; Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award; McKnight Fellowship, among others. |
| Website | |
| migdaliacruz | |
Migdalia Cruz is a writer of plays, musical theatre and opera in the U.S. and has been translated into Spanish, French, Arabic, Greek, and Turkish.
Her works have been produced in venues as diverse as Playwrights Horizons in New York City, the Old Red Lion Theatre in London, Miracle Theatre in Portland, Oregon, Ateneo Puertorriqueño in San Juan, the National Theatre of Greece in Athens, and Houston Grand Opera.[1] Other venues around the world include: Mabou Mines, Classic Stage Company, INTAR, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Monarch Theater, En-Garde Arts, HOME, Shaliko Company, New York Shakespeare Festival's Festival Latino, Theatre For The New City, and the W.O.W. Cafe (New York); Ateneo Puertorriqueño (PR); National Theater of Greece (Athens); Foro Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (Mexico City); Vancouver Players (Vancouver, B.C.); Latino Chicago Theater Company (Chicago); American Repertory Theatre (Cambridge); Cleveland Public Theatre (Cleveland); Frank Theatre (Minneapolis); Théâtre d’aujourd hui (Montreal); American Music Theatre Festival (Philadelphia); Intersection for the Arts/LATA (San Francisco); and Cornerstone Theater Company (Los Angeles).[2]
Cruz is the recipient of numerous awards including the National Endowment for the Arts playwriting fellowship (in 1991 and 1995). In 1999, she was named the first Sackler Artist in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut where she worked on Featherless Angels her commissioned play about children in war torn countries. In 1995, her research took her to Cambodia (where she met with former child soldiers of the Khymer Rouge), Croatia (where she met Bosnian child refugees), and to Dharamsala, India, where she interviewed the Dalai Lama along with teenage members of the Tibetan refugee community.[3]
In December 2013, Cruz was awarded the New York Community Trust/Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright's Award. She is a recipient of the Kennedy Center's Fund for New American Plays award for Another Part of the House (1996). In 1994, she was the PEW/TCG National Artist-in-Residence at Classic Stage Company in New York. She was a McKnight Fellow in 1988.[4]
Cruz' writing is known for its bold poetic crispness, violence and sexuality, transforming the ugly to beautiful. Her mentor, María Irene Fornés, has noted the voluptuousness of her work. Playwright Tony Kushner has said that "one can feel history in the bones of her characters," and indeed, her themes are drawn from Latinx history and her personal experiences of growing up in the South Bronx.[5]
Cruz received her MFA degree from Columbia University and is an alumna of New Dramatists (1987-1994). From 1991 to 1998, Cruz was a playwright in residence at Latino Chicago Theater Company. Cruz also worked with María Irene Fornés at INTAR'S HPRL (Hispanic Playwrights-in-Residence Laboratory) from 1984–1991, a professional workshop for Latino/a writers in New York City. Cruz was profoundly influenced by Fornés and expressed her gratitude in several short plays, essays, and poems, including "A Double Haiku for Irene Because She Detests the Ordinary From Her Eternal Fan, Migdalia:"
In six lines or less –
I must honor the teacher
who gave me the moon.
It was an honest,
clear, yet savage light, poured from
desire's heart-fire.[6]
One of her most profound experiences was in 2007, working with the experimental theater company, Mabou Mines, and one of its founders, Ruth Maleczech, on a floating play on a barge in the East River, an echo to Walt Whitman's "Song of New York" 100 years later, a love letter to the post-9/11 survival spirit of New York City, called "Song for New York: What Women Do While Men Sit Knitting", written in five parts, one for each borough, by five women poets—Cruz wrote the Bronx song: Da Bronx Rocks/From the Country to the Country of the Bronx, with composer Lisa Gutkin of The Klezmatics.
She has also been nurtured by Royal Court Theatre/New Dramatists Exchange '94 (London); Steppenwolf Theatre's New PlaysLab (Chicago); Bay Area Playwrights' Festival '94, Festival Latino '93 at Teatro Mision (San Francisco); the Sundance Institute; Midwest PlayLabs; Mark Taper Forum's New Play Festival; Omaha Magic Theatre; "Songs from Coconut Hill" Theater Festival '05; and South Coast Rep's HPP '04.[7]
Cruz has taught and lectured across the country and abroad in community centers, theaters, and schools, from junior high to graduate level, at NYU, Princeton, Earlham, UNT, Mission Cultural Center & Intersection for the Arts (San Francisco), UC Riverside, Amherst, Lake Erie College, UNM (Albuquerque), Brown, Monarch Theater at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club & P.S. 106 (NYC), and Alameda Theatre Company (Toronto), among others.
Cruz has written more than 50 plays including:
Cruz's plays and monologues are published by NoPassport Press, Theatre Communications Group, U. of Arizona Press, Routledge Press, Penguin Books, Arte Publico Press, Applause Books, Smith & Kraus Publishers, and Third Woman Press, including:
Ms. Cruz also contributed a Chapter in CONDUCTING A LIFE: Testimonials for Maria Irene Fornés, ed. Caridad Svich & Maria Delgado, (Smith & Kraus, 2000).
Scenes and Monologues from MIRIAM’S FLOWERS, THE HAVE-LITTLE, FRIDA, LUCY LOVES ME, RUSHING WATERS, TELLING TALES & LATINS IN LA-LA LAND:
The work is referenced in several scholarly texts, in articles and interviews by Tiffany Ana Lopez (UCR), Jorge Huerta (UCSD), Analola Santana (U.of Florida), Alberto Sandoval (Mt. Holyoke College), Maria Teresa Marrero (UNT), Maria Delgado (U. of London), and Caridad Svich.
Also, interviewed in the following publications: Trans-global readings: Crossing theatrical boundaries, ed. Caridad Svich, Manchester (University Press, 2003); Women Who Write Plays: Interviews with American Dramatists, ed. Alexis Greene (Smith & Kraus Books, 2001); Chicanas/Latinas In American Theatre: A history of Performance, by Elizabeth C. Ramirez (Indiana University Press, 2000); Latinas On Stage: Criticism and Practice, eds. Alicia Arrizón & Lillian Manzor (Third Woman Press, 2000); Ollantay Theater Magazine, V.1, N.2, ed. Pedro R. Monge-Rafuls, V.V, N.1, and V.IX, N.18, ed. Maria Teresa Marrero, V.XIX, N.38. PAJ, V. XXXI, No.3, ed. Bonnie Marranca, in article of Fornés as Teacher, 2009. Dramatists Guild Quarterly, V.32, N.3, Autumn 1995.
In Spanish, the work is referenced in: ME LLAMAN DESDE ALLÁ, by Rosalina Perales, Impresora Soto Castillo, S.A., 2010; Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña/ARTWORKS/NEA, TEATRO PUERTORRIQUEÑA EN ESTADOS UNIDOS, Las flores de Miriam, translated by Roberto Irizarry, with notes by Rosalina Perales, 2011; & in OLLANTAY THEATER MAGAZINE's Puerto Rican Theater Issue, which includes an essay about MIRIAM’S FLOWERS by Roberto Irizarry and other scholarly essays by Rosalina Perales which reference the work, including Spanish translations of 3 of the TALES: Sand, Fire & Jesus, v. XVIII, n.35-36, Fall, 2010.
Affectionately known as the madrina of the Lark's Mexico/US Playwright Exchange, Cruz has translated four plays for the project, 2008–2013.[9]
Cruz has taught playwriting at U.of Iowa/Playwrights’ Workshop, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Princeton University, and at Amherst College, and guest lectured at Yale University, Wesleyan University, Mount Holyoke College, and Columbia University.[10]
