Teatro de la Rosa opens Anna in the Tropics this week

by Shawn Parikh

Fort Worth’s only Hispanic theater company, Teatro de la Rosa, is continuing its season with the Tarrant County premiere of Anna in the Tropics which runs from February 22 - March 9.

The award-winning play is written by Nilo Cruz who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (the first Cuban-American playwright to win) and the Steinberg New Play Award from The American Theatre Critics Associations for Anna in the Tropics. His other plays include A Park in our House, A Bicycle Country, Two Sisters and a Piano, Lorca in a Green Dress and Hortensia and Museum of Dreams.

Anna in the Tropics is a romantic drama set in the oppressive heat of a 1920s South Florida cigar factory, where cigar makers struggle to preserve their tradition in the face of impending modernity and mechanization. Pride and passions are already running high when a dashing Cuban lector is hired to read Tolstoy's passionate love story, Anna Karenina, to the cutters, bunchers and rollers. His presence ignites potent and painful fires inside a young dreamer, a forgotten wife and a rejected husband. Cruz subtly interweaves both stories until they echo one another in a heady mix of love and betrayal.

Directed by Shawn Gann, the cast includes Rob Bosquez, David Conard, Matt David Ducey, Yvonne Duque, Sara Elizondo, Elizabeth Evans & George X. Rodriquez. Purchase tickets online or by calling 817-624-8333.